Had We Never Loved So Blindly
by Mahsa FF
Summary: Tonks seeks a deeper connection in her relationship with the elusive Remus than mere sexual intimacy. Her attempts to gain his trust are thwarted by a series of misunderstandings, leading to a disastrous encounter with Sirius. Strong adult content. CH8 UP
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's note:**__ This story contains scenes that are __sexually explicit with strong language__. The sexual element is crucial to my storyline, but there's also plot, snappy dialogue, magical mayhem, sarky Sirius, sarkier Severus_—_what's not to love? However, if you would absolutely hate the occasional graphic sex scene, you should probably leave now. --sadly waves goodbye--_

_Thanks to **melusin** for the Brit-picking and encouragement._

_**MarauderLoverN10:** __I rewrote this chapter with you in mind. Thank you for your kind words. :)_

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**Had We Never Loved So Blindly  
**  
_Had we never lov'd sae kindly,  
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,  
Never met_—_or never parted_—  
_We had ne'er been broken hearted_

- Robert Burns_  
_  
**Chapter 1**

The subject first came up in bed. And that in itself was odd, when she came to think about it later, because it was a place where they rarely conversed. Chatting was for the library with its musty books on Dark Magic, for supper in the kitchen with Order comrades, or for their solitary rambles through Muggle London; the bedroom was for bodies, not for minds: for sleeping, and also for touching, sucking, stroking, thrusting, biting, fucking, and—when it was close to the full moon, as it was that night—for more fucking.

That night, Remus and Tonks lay in a boneless heap amid sticky, tangled sheets. A faint breeze came from the open window, ruffling the mildewed curtains and playing over their flushed, sweaty skin. When the air turned chill against the damp hair at her neck, Tonks shivered and sat up with a sleepy grumble to locate the duvet. The bed creaked as Remus shifted behind her; he always seemed to be restless under the waxing moon as if the moon plucked at his skin until it became too hot and tight to contain him.

She finally found the bedcovers piled in a heap on the dusty floor and yanked them back up onto the bed, resigned to the idea that they'd be on the ground again before morning. In contrast to his daytime calm, Remus was a fretful, unquiet sleeper, muttering and thrashing his way through the night as if it were a dense thicket that had to be hacked through in order to reach the dawn. By morning, the sheets would be bunched under him, or wound around an ankle, and the duvet would be on the floor collecting dust or—given the nature of this house—something worse.

As Tonks smoothed the sheets, the moon emerged from behind a cloud and filled the room with its radiance. The furniture took on a pearly sheen quite out of keeping with its station, a former servant's bedroom at the top of Grimmauld Place. In the revealing glow, Tonks cast an appreciative eye over her lover's lean body, painted pale and smooth by the moonlight. She delighted in his lanky frame as it stretched from one end of the bed to the other: broad shoulders tapering to a flat hard belly, narrow hips, long legs. Unclothed, he appeared younger and rather more fit than the grey in his deep gold hair suggested.

She ran a hand lightly over his abdomen, tracing the thick ridge of scar tissue below his shoulder, moving down to his ribs, and then to the line of hair that led lower. His lovely cock stirred in its nest of wiry curls as if it felt the silvery touch of the moon. She looked up into his face through her lashes, half expecting him to reach for her yet again, but Remus was staring into space, the ghost of a frown on his lips and a telltale wrinkle between his eyebrows.

She wondered what he was thinking. Something she'd done quite a lot of in the three months since they'd started sleeping together. His look of worry wasn't new, although she'd never before seen it in bed. In the early days of their relationship, she'd often asked what was on his mind, making her curiosity a bit of a joke each time, to let her skittish new boyfriend know that she wasn't pressing him for confidences he wasn't ready to give. And invariably, Remus would brush her off, politely, but no less firmly for that.

So, after a time, she'd stopped asking and tried not to feel hurt by the exclusion, although occasionally—in truth, often—she was. She reasoned to herself that Remus was a private man, so private that it bordered on obsession. But she'd been aware of this aspect of Remus for almost as long as she'd known the man, so how could he be blamed? And it wasn't as if it was directed solely at her; he kept everyone at a distance, except possibly his oldest friend, Sirius. Those two communicated by a subtle code that defied Tonks's best attempts to unravel it. In the end, Tonks knew, without knowing quite how, that the biggest mistake she could make with Remus would be to try too hard to get closer to him. Remus could, and would, drift out of her tenuous hold just as effortlessly as he'd drifted in. So she kept as much emotional distance as she was able, hoping he'd gradually open up to her.

Remus had propped himself half-sitting against the pillows on the headboard, arms crossed behind his head. Tonks lay down and nestled against him, pulling the duvet up to her chin against the predawn chill. She breathed in his musky male scent, which she always found to be, paradoxically, both comforting and arousing. Her fingers continued to play along the taut muscles of his stomach—her hands couldn't seem to resist his body, even when the rest of her was sated. Remus didn't respond to her touch, and after a few minutes, she looked up again to see him still deep in thought. She wrapped an arm around his waist and, breaking what was by now an unwritten rule, murmured into his chest, "Remus... Will you— Can you tell me what's troubling you? Is it—" she tried to sound nonchalant over the tightness in her throat. "Is it me?"

And in the silence that followed, she imagined her words like pebbles dropped into a still pool, spreading soft ripples into the darkness. Then she felt him draw in a breath and pause, as if readying one of his customary non-responses ("Oh, just wondering how Buckbeak's getting along. I thought I might've heard him." "Now what could be worrying me when I've got a naked witch in my bed?" "Hm? Nothing important. I've forgotten already. See?"). But instead, he draped an arm across her shoulders and pulled her tightly against him so that her head lay pressed to his heart. She listened to its steady beat and felt his chest rise and fall with each breath. For a long time, he didn't speak, and she wondered if this was simply a new way of putting her off. But then he said quietly, "No, never you, Dora. It's Sirius. I'm... I can't stop thinking about him."

And even now, even as she felt inordinately happy at this tiny break in his shell, her first impulse was to make a wisecrack, maybe in mock affront that her bloke was mooning over another man whilst in bed with her. But she kept silent, counting the slow thumps of his heart and hoping he'd say more. Instead, Remus slid down to lie alongside her face to face, their bodies touching along their entire length. Cupping the back of her head with his hand, he drew her to him, and they kissed.

The next few minutes were spent in gently exploring each other's lips, tasting, nibbling, sucking, sharing warm breath. Tonks could feel one of Remus's hands behind her, stroking the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck while his other hand rested possessively on her thigh. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the places where their bodies were in contact, feeling her skin come alive everywhere they touched. When she opened them again, Remus's amber eyes were glimmering inches from her own. He ran one long-fingered hand up her thigh to rest lightly on her hip. Toying with her hip bone, he whispered. "Every day, he seems more unstable. More... moody and unpredictable."

Tonks's breathing was slightly unsteady now, and her mind had to scramble to remember who Remus was talking about. Sirius. Right. Tonks tried to process what Remus was telling her, to find a way to encourage him, subtly, to keep talking—because wasn't this what she'd been wanting?—but his hands were roaming over her legs and back in slow, deliberate movements that were making it impossible for her to think. What she really wanted was to rub herself against his hard body, to wrap her legs around him, and—

She felt him sigh into her ear. "It would be so very like him to do something stupid." Remus kissed a line along her neck, teeth scraping along the soft skin.

A moan escaped her, and she replied a little breathlessly, "Ah. Um. Stupider than usual, d'you mean?" There. She'd done it. Played it for a bit of a laugh, even though she'd meant not to. She waited for him to huff and smile and say, "Yes, you're right. It's ridiculous, isn't it, love?" and redirect their interactions towards more... physical pursuits. But this time, he didn't walk out through the open door she'd left for him.

His mouth still at her neck, he ran a hot, wet tongue along her jaw. When he sucked hard just below her ear, her body responded with an erotic shiver, and she felt the heat kindle between her legs. Sex with Remus usually fell on either end of a spectrum: sometimes fast and urgent, sometimes a slow teasing build-up. Each of them sparked a different sort of intensity, and it appeared that this time Remus was in no hurry. He took his mouth from her skin long enough to murmur, "I suppose 'dangerous and impulsive' would be better words than 'stupid'. He isn't stupid. Far from it."

Tonks almost laughed that Remus could still deliberate over the best choice of words to use to describe his troubled friend while she was having trouble thinking of anything but him sliding into her, thrusting deep, filling her. She felt the delicious, throbbing ache at her core grow at the thought.

Remus pulled his face away from her slightly, chewing his lower lip in that maddening way he had that made her want to bite it for him. "Dora, he isn't used to being alone with time on his hands. He wants— I know him, you see, I- I know him so well, even after all those years apart. He wants—" Remus stopped, apparently trying to marshal his thoughts. Tonks dipped her head to bite gently at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, relishing the answering rumble from deep in Remus's throat. Finally, he said, "Part of it is that he's jealous of me. Of us. He doesn't want to be, but he is. And that only makes it worse for him. Every day that he spends shut up in this house, he's forced to see me getting everything that he wants."

Tonks opened her mouth in surprise, but before she could speak, Remus was kissing down her neck, his hot mouth making his way to her shoulders and then to her breasts. She tangled one hand into his hair when he reached her erect nipples and lapped at them, first one and then the other. The pleasure from his tongue on her quickly became almost too intense, too overwhelming. She was growing lightheaded with desire, but she wanted to say something. If there was enough blood left in her brain for it to supply the words.

With an effort, Tonks wriggled away from Remus's mouth, and he lifted his face to her. She managed to say, "What are you— Are you suggesting that Sirius wants to get into my knickers, and he's going to do something drastic because you're getting into them instead?"

"No. Yes. No, I mean. Not exactly." The wrinkle between his eyebrows cleared, and Remus's lips twitched for a moment before becoming more serious. He drew her in for another gentle kiss, gazing down at her face as he traced a warm thumb along her lips. Her tongue darted out to taste the faint tang of salt in its wake. As she licked the tip of his thumb, Remus let out a low growl that seemed to flow through her entire body, settling in a pool of wet heat between her legs.

Remus lifted his thumb to his own mouth and sucked it thoughtfully. Tonks stared, panting slightly at the sight. It was almost embarrassing, really, how he did this to her every time. Taking his thumb from his mouth, he brought it down between her breasts and drew a damp line down her chest, and then lower between her ribs. He pushed her firmly onto her back and, under the duvet, his hand moved lower, down her belly. At her navel, his thumb stopped to trace a circle around the soft skin there, creating an answering tingle in her nerves that felt almost magical.

"There's something you need to understand about him, Dora." And Tonks came close to whining in frustration. There was something she needed, all right, but it wasn't to understand Sirius. Tonks fought down an urge to grab Remus and suck his tongue into her mouth to shut him up. Talking is what you wanted, she reminded herself. She just hadn't anticipated that he'd ever become so confiding right in the middle of foreplay, for God's sake.

Oblivious of her frustrated state, and continuing to trace a pattern on her belly with his thumb, Remus went on, "He doesn't look it now, but he's always been a- a ladies' man, I suppose you'd call him. Back then, in the first war, he invariably had a woman. Or two. The rest of us— Well. Sometimes we got lucky. Sometimes not. More often not." He let out a silent puff of amusement. "But Sirius was... It was simply part of who he was. If you could have seen him then, you'd know what I'm trying to say. Picture it: Cast off scion of a rich old family. Founding member of the Order of the Phoenix. Dashing into danger at a moment's notice, and coming home with a few new curse scars and another war story to tell. And always, always a beautiful, willing woman warming his bed, eager to spread her legs for him."

At Remus's last words, Tonks felt his erection pulse against her thigh. She smiled into his chest. "Hm. Is that what he's jealous of, then? The way I spread my legs to welcome my hero home from battle?" She lowered her voice to a sexy purr and asked again, "Is that what I do for you?"

She looked up into his face. Remus's eyes had darkened to reflect the desire that his body had already revealed. Now, in one unhurried movement, he pulled off the duvet to reveal her nude body. She shivered as he pressed her back into the mattress, his eyes raking over her exposed flesh. Moving his mouth to hers, he captured her lips in a searing kiss. His tongue slid against hers and then pushed deeper into her mouth, claiming her, intensifying their connection until her body felt as if it were full of liquid fire.

Remus broke their kiss but kept his face against hers, their lips barely touching. "Yes. Yes, you do that for me," he said in a husky whisper, "among other things."

God, but she loved the night before a full moon. She moved her hand between them, running feather light fingers along his rigid length. At her touch, she saw hunger burning in the golden depths of his eyes, and her body answered with a sudden ache for him that was almost unbearable.

She said, with effort, "Um... Remus, listen. Sirius was in Azkaban for years. You say how difficult it is for him to be alone now, but... He was alone in prison, yeah? He had years to learn to deal with it. And did deal with it, by all accounts, remarkably well. And..." She gasped as Remus brought a hand to her breast to tease her taut nipple. She arched into his hand and then swallowed a groan and went on breathily, "Sirius is with us, Remus. With all of us. He isn't alone anymore. We won't let him do anything stupid."

"Mm," he replied, if it was meant to be a reply at all, rather than a reflection of how he felt about his hand roaming over her breasts. Remus's mouth renewed its exploration of her body, sucking and biting at her neck, her shoulders, her ears, her jaw. He stopped now and then to blow cool air against the reddened skin he left in his wake.

She couldn't believe how easily he could turn her on. Her fingers tightened on his cock, and he began to rock his hips, moving hard and ready through her soft fingers. He let out a low groan that sent shivers down her spine. God, she wanted him. He lowered his head to her breasts, replacing his hands with his mouth, and began again to lick and nibble her erect nipples. When he turned his cheek to rub its roughness against those sensitive nubs, she sucked in her breath at the exquisite sensation of pleasure mixed with pain.

Remus's eyes glinted at her reaction. Reaching for her wrists, he pulled them sharply up over her head, pinning her arms there without effort in one strong hand.

This aggressive lovemaking had been a revelation to her; something she wouldn't have predicted before their relationship began. She had never thought of herself as particularly submissive, or that she would be turned on by anything remotely rough or painful, but domination seemed to come naturally to Remus. His need to be in complete control was the driving force in their sexual acts, especially this close to the full moon. And no man had ever made her feel this way before.

As ever, Remus led her along step by step, from the first brush of their lips to the final push over the edge. He took his pleasure from her at whatever pace he chose, and Tonks marvelled again at how fresh and exciting it was for her to relinquish control and give herself up to him. Moving his mouth from her breasts, he nipped and licked his way up to her lips, capturing them in another hard kiss—this time fucking her mouth with his tongue as his hips moved in tandem. She could feel his cock sliding warm and thick against her hip, and instinctively she tried to twist so she could wrap her legs around him.

But of course Remus wasn't allowing that kind of initiative on her part, not at this time of the month. With one hand, he continued to hold her arms immobile while the other reached down between her legs, pushing her thighs apart. She was already swollen and sensitive from their earlier lovemaking, and as his fingers began to stroke and tease her, she moaned. "Merlin, Remus. Please..." But Remus kept to his tormenting pace, caressing, circling, dipping in tiny thrusts.

Just when Tonks thought she might fly apart from the sensations Remus was causing in her, he leaned close to her ear and told her, "Open your legs for me, love."

She was almost delirious with arousal and sensation, gasping and uttering incoherent little mews. She spread her legs wide, exposing her sex to him, her body arching under his fingers in desperate supplication.

Remus was panting himself, now, his cock pressing itself into her hip like a hot brand. Suddenly, he pushed two, and then three, stiff fingers into her wet slit. Pumping them slowly, he passed his thumb very lightly over her clit. She cried out, bucking so hard her arms yanked against the hand that pinned them, and he tightened his grip on her.

"Is this what you want?" he asked hoarsely.

"Ohgodohyesremus," she breathed, almost sobbing.

His fingers sped up their thrusting and then, agonisingly, slowed down, occasionally brushing her engorged nub. He kept up this tantalising cycle for what seemed like an endless age until she was a quivering mass of need and want. Tonks began to lose herself; she felt as if she were dissolving, as if only his fingers inside her anchored her to the world and kept her from disappearing entirely. All she could do was arch, and feel, and be. She wondered if she might die from the intensity of this plateau he kept her on.

"Do you want to come, Dora?" Remus asked in a ragged whisper.

Nothing was left of her but tingling nerves and shameless desperation, and she whimpered and moaned in answer, finally managing to draw in enough breath to whisper, "Please."

But he wasn't done drawing out his pleasure. He breathed into her ear, "Is there anything you wouldn't do for me, Dora?"

Again, she worked to draw breath and answered, "No, Remus. A-Anything. Ohpleaseohplease."

Remus's need for her was evident as he rubbed the slippery tip of his erection over her hip. In his growing excitement, his hand squeezed her wrists. The delicate bones pressed together, causing sharp needles of pain that seemed to travel straight down to her core. She bucked against his fingers, and his thumb ground down roughly over her swollen clit. Her brain felt as if it were exploding behind her eyes, and she cried out, calling his name as her back arched off the bed again and again, dizzying spasms of ecstasy wracking her body.

As she lay quivering, spent, and gasping, Remus pulled his fingers from her and brought them to his lips, closing his eyes briefly as he savoured her taste. Then, he pushed her pliant body onto her stomach and jerked up her hips with a rough urgency, so that she was on hands and knees.

Growling deep in his throat, he covered her with his own body, and Tonks felt his heat against her back and his breath on her neck. Remus bit down against the nape of her neck, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to be an emphatic signal of his dominance. Lowering her head and raising her arse, she submitted to him eagerly, relishing both the pain and indescribable delight that were coming. As the moonbeams fell on their crouching bodies, he rammed his thick length into her from behind, showing an aggression that was never seen outside the bedroom.

At this time of the month, Remus was almost insatiable, and he always took her roughly from the back, like an animal, grunting harshly with each massive thrust. As with so many other things, it wasn't something they discussed, but after three months, she was familiar with his cyclical behaviour.

Remus slammed into her again and again, his heavy balls swinging against her sex, as instinct drove him. The headboard was crashing into the wall with each thrust, making the peculiar swallowed thump of a good Silencing Charm. As his pace increased, it seemed to her as if Remus were driving his own pleasure far into her body. She cried out at the intensity of this deep penetration.

Truthfully, it hurt enough that she saw stars each time he pounded against her cervix. Merlin, he was big, and so hard. How could it not hurt? But the pain was overlaid with a primal satisfaction she'd never known with any other lover. The pain seemed to take her to another level of feeling, until she was floating above herself in a state of fulfilment and indescribable euphoria. To submit completely to him as he took her this way was intoxicating, so she fisted the sheets and bit into the pillow to muffle her cries.

He fucked her relentlessly until he was at the edge of his endurance, his body slicked with sweat, while she floated in a space where nothing existed except his cock and her cunt. Finally, his thrusts became erratic and bordering on brutal as he pulled her hips back into him with a bruising grip. She stifled a scream as he slammed in as far as his considerable length would allow, and at last she felt him pulsing, his hot seed filling her to overflowing, as he cried out in completion. His spent body crumpled onto hers, pressing her down into the mattress, and she felt his release running down her thigh.

After a moment, he rolled silently to her side, and they both drifted towards sleep as the moon set in the deep blue sky of dawn.

All thought of Sirius, of their earlier conversation, and indeed of anything, had emptied from her mind. But the last thing Tonks heard before sleep claimed her was Remus's hoarse whisper.

"Someone like Sirius wasn't meant to be shut up. He needs to feel like a man. He needs to be a man."

_(continued in chapter 2)_

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_**Author's note:**__ --Wipes brow-- whew! So, I never thought I'd ever write something like that, I gotta tell ya. But there it __is, smut, in the very first chapter of my very first story. Most of the chapters won't be like this, for better or worse LOL. _

_Coming up next: Tonks's patience is tried, and Sirius is (momentarily) mystified. However, before going to the next chapter, why not __click that little button down there and tell me if you enjoyed this chapter?  
_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Author's note:** Thanks so much to those who took the time to leave a review. It makes a huge difference to my motivation in getting these chapters out. Thanks also go to **melusin** for Brit-picking and a quick beta._

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**Had We Never Loved So Blindly  
**  
**Chapter 2**

Tonks managed a few hours of sleep before the mysterious workings of her internal clock woke her. She scrunched down under the covers to block out the racket of birdsong coming through the window and yawned mightily, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. Snaking one arm out from under the bedclothes, she groped for the watch on the bedside table and brought it back into her dim cave. She squinted at the time and swore softly under her breath.

Emerging reluctantly from the covers, Tonks blinked in the morning brightness. By day, the bedroom lost what little charm it had possessed by moonlight. A small, boxy room, its walls were a sickly shade of grey-green, spotted here and there by patches of mildew that even Molly's strongest cleaning charms had been unable to dispel completely. Considering that he'd lived here for almost a year, Remus hadn't imprinted much of his personality on the place: Aside from a bed and table, it held only an old wardrobe and a squashy armchair that looked as if it had been liberated from one of the better appointed bedrooms downstairs.

She'd never seen his room before he'd led her up those endless flights of stairs—at least, they'd felt endless at the time—on their first breathless night together. The next morning, she'd asked why on earth he'd chosen such a poky, out-of-the-way place when he had the run of the entire house. He'd shrugged amiably and asked if she had the correct time, as his watch seemed to have stopped. That was the first question he'd ducked. A milestone of a sort, she thought ruefully, although she hadn't noticed it at the time.

She slipped quietly out of bed, feeling sticky, sore, dishevelled, and distinctly in a hurry. Twenty minutes left her just enough time to dress, have a cup of tea, and Apparate to work. She wasted the first minute looking fondly down at Remus, sprawled quite peacefully at the moment. As always, he was uncovered, save for most of a sheet that had somehow twisted itself tightly around his left thigh. He never slept under covers that she'd seen, and she'd first come to his bed in January, shortly after the big Azkaban breakout.

Was it a werewolf thing, or simply a Remus thing that he was never cold?

Well, she'd just have to tack that question onto her growing mental list as Remus had a seemingly bottomless well of personal information that he didn't care to divulge. Not that she would have had the courage to ask, anyway. And that, in a nutshell, was how the boundaries of their relationship had been marked out. The rules were defined in its silences: in questions evaded, in subjects changed, in conversations deftly redirected.

With a sigh, Tonks got up and tiptoed across the room to find her clothes, discarded in haphazard fashion across the floor. She smiled as she remembered their arrival in the bedroom last night. She'd spent most of supper time making surreptitious eyes at Remus across the table as Molly, Arthur, and Bill had chatted about Charlie's latest letter from Romania.

For his part, Remus had met her glances with the same friendly but indefinably remote expression he used with everyone else; he was nothing if not self-controlled, even on the night before a full moon. Over his plate of spaghetti Bolognese, he'd asked Molly politely about the dragon colony's latest acquisition, exchanged observations on Romanian politics with Arthur, and even teased Bill about Fleur's extended visit to Paris to see her family. Sirius, luckily, had been off skulking somewhere, which made for a far more pleasant evening for everyone.

Congenial as the company had been, she knew Remus had been impatient to leave. He'd made their excuses early, murmuring something about a report from Dumbledore's contact in Helsinki that he wanted Tonks to see. Not that this fooled anyone at all; their involvement was an open secret.

Tonks hadn't understood at first why Remus continued this little fiction. Anyone as observant as he was could surely see the indulgent smiles such a remark prompted. But over time, as she grew to understand him better, Tonks realised that this was Remus's characteristically indirect way of asking his colleagues to respect his privacy in the matter. Thus, no one alluded to their affair, even casually, at least when they were present. Except Sirius, of course. He was always the exception to every rule, and Tonks suspected he prided himself on that, if nothing else.

So last night they'd climbed sedately upstairs to Remus's room, bodies not touching except where his hot fingertips had rested lightly behind her elbow. Somehow this slow buildup, the cool glances over supper, the trivial small talk, the unhurried leave-taking, the chaste walk to the bedroom, had ignited something in her nerves that never failed to grow into a desire bordering on desperation. For both of them, she suspected; Tonks had barely pulled the bedroom door shut before Remus was tugging off her clothes. She'd just had time to cast a somewhat breathless Silencing Charm before he had her pinned against the wall, her face pressed to the musty green wallpaper, as he had pushed into her with an urgency that was at once flattering and slightly intimidating.

"I don't have all day, dearie," complained a tarnished mirror, breaking into her thoughts.

Tonks glared at the mirror, mounted on the wall beside the rickety wardrobe. She hissed a soft "Shh," glancing nervously behind her to see if Remus had awoken. After their dalliances near the full moon, she liked to survey her body privately. Bruises and minor contusions were easy enough for her to fix, as advanced healing charms were a standard part of Auror training. She wanted to rid herself of any marks in case Remus woke up; the few times he'd noticed bruises, he'd become noticeably upset, although—typically for him—he'd demonstrated it by spending the rest of the day answering her in monosyllables and avoiding her eye. Not an easy man to reassure.

Grabbing her wand from the scarlet robe puddled at her feet, she started with the bruises on her hips. Each side sported five finger-shaped marks, livid in the morning light. As she flicked her wand over each one, it stung for a moment and then flickered to invisibility. Next, she examined her wrists, removing bruises that stood out like purple bracelets where Remus had squeezed too hard. Finally, she turned her attention to the love bites. They were harder to eliminate, but she could generally make them fade, if not completely disappear. She took care of one at the base of her throat and another just under her left ear. She suspected there was a third at the back of her neck, but she left it alone as it would easily be hidden by longer hair.

Satisfied, she cast a strong cleaning spell over her body and then changed her hair from pink to the bright purple she often wore for work, letting it grow long enough to touch her shoulders. As she reached for her underthings, she heard Remus moving on the bed. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a sympathetic grin. He sat up and stretched. His tawny, silver-shot hair was standing up on one side, and he looked far more exhausted than she felt. Dark circles were sketched under his red-rimmed eyes, but he returned her smile and said in a croaky voice, "Not late, I hope?"

"Nah, loads of time yet. I was just going down for a cup of tea. Make one for you, if you like. How d'you take it?"

Something subtle changed in Remus's face as he said lightly, "Oh, any old way is fine. However you want to make it."

Sudden moisture prickled in Tonks's eyes, and she turned away from him, telling herself sternly that she was being an emotional idiot. Blinking back the definitely-not-tears, she reached down for her knickers and began to pull them on, saying in a bright voice, "Well, I must say you're easy to please, aren't you?" Still not looking at Remus, she cast around for her bra, finally locating it behind the armchair.

When she did look up, Remus was gazing at her with an indefinable expression. He said tentatively, "Slow down a bit with that, will you, love?" His eyes crinkled. "You know I like watching."

That was an understatement, straight from the master of understatements. Remus was forever asking her to dress and undress for him, and she generally enjoyed it as she'd always been something of an exhibitionist outside the bedroom. She liked showing off for people, changing her hair or her nose or wearing unusual clothes. But it was Remus who'd encouraged her to develop a talent for striptease. Hitching up her smile, she tried not to think about why Remus invariably moved things in a sexual direction whenever he dodged a personal question, even such a trivial one. She'd only asked how he liked his ruddy tea, for pity's sake. Dead sexy, he may be. But there was no denying the man had some strange issues.

She finished dressing more seductively, running sensuous hands over her stomach and breasts as she pulled on her bra, wand holster, and shirt, swaying her hips as she stepped into her jeans, running her wand suggestively between her legs before slipping it into its holster. It was hard to look provocative putting on heavy boots, but she gave it a shot. Judging from the rapt way Remus's eyes followed her hands, she'd been fairly successful. When she finished, she picked up her Auror robes, draped them over her arm, and walked over to the bedside. She looked down at the erect cock jutting up against his stomach and raised an eyebrow. He gave her that lopsided smile she loved, the one that had the power to make her forget her own name.

"You see what you do to me, Tonks?" Remus said huskily. "But I know you don't have time, and I'm completely knackered in any case."

She reached down and drew a finger lightly along his jawline, whispering into his ear, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, hm? I could take care of that for you with minimal effort on your part. Wouldn't take long either, I reckon."

He reached up and held her hand against his cheek. "Uh uh," he chuckled. "You know you need to go. Besides, I can take care of myself." Seeing her dubious look, he added teasingly, "I do know how, you know."

Laughing in spite of herself, she gave him a quick kiss, saying, "I'm sure. Well, I'm off, then. I'll pop back up in a few minutes with your tea. And I'll be try to be back for lunch if I can manage it—supper for certain."

As she clomped across the landing to the toilet in her regulation boots, she heard his voice calling faintly after her not to bother with him, that he'd be fine, that he was going to sleep most of the day, anyway.

* * *

Tonks clattered down the stairs and pushed her way through the basement door into the kitchen. A quick glance at her watch told her that she had ten minutes unless she wanted to face Scrimgeour's wrath at the weekly staff meeting. If she was in luck, Molly would still be puttering around the kitchen at this hour. Molly, bless her, could always be counted on to take pity and brew Tonks a quick cup of tea while remaining ostentatiously incurious about which bed she'd slept in.

Pushing open the door, however, Tonks encountered not Molly, but an unconscious Sirius slumped over the table.

"Bugger!" she muttered between her teeth. Her first panicked thought was to hustle him out of the kitchen before Molly saw him—she'd have kittens—but then she recalled that the Weasleys had intended to return home to the Burrow last night. Tonks sent fervent thanks to Merlin for that small favour.

Even in repose, Sirius looked decidedly uncomfortable. Lank black hair fanned across his pallid face, and one cheek was squashed damply against the scrubbed wooden surface of the table. Tonks leaned close, sniffed, and then wrinkled her nose. Firewhisky. Glancing around, she saw that he seemed to have stashed the bottle somewhere else before passing out. Such were the self-protective impulses of a drunk.

As if sensing her disapproving presence, Sirius muttered angrily in his sleep, and the hand resting on the table curled into a fist.

Tonks backed away and bit her lip with a sudden pang of guilt. Immersed in her own happiness with Remus over the past few months, she'd not spared Sirius much thought except to be irritated by his often-boorish behaviour. The poor bloke did look miserable, even asleep. He seemed to have gone downhill since Christmas. Of course, the entire Order were all feeling the strain since the holidays. The day after she and Remus had taken the kids back to Hogwarts for winter term, ten Death Eaters had escaped from Azkaban to rejoin Voldemort. And Sirius, to his often expressed frustration, had been unable to join the rest of them in trying to track down the escapees.

Still, Tonks didn't think he looked like a man about to do something rash, as Remus feared. He looked much more like a man who was determined to drink himself blind.

Tonks tiptoed over to the counter and filled the kettle as quietly as possible. It wasn't so much that she cared about waking him—the man had chosen to pass out in what was practically a public place, after all—but better a Sirius asleep than a Sirius awake and making sarky comments about her and Remus. That seemed to be Sirius's preferred style of conversation with the two of them these days, and unlike Remus, she had a hard time not rising to his bait.

With a wave of her wand, she got the fire going underneath the kettle and set about locating the tea things. She found milk, sugar, and a tarnished silver tea tray embossed with the Black family crest. Putting them on the worktop, she rooted in the cupboard for cups. As she reached to take them down, her hip knocked the tray to the floor where it landed with an earsplitting clatter.

Sirius jerked his head up from the table with a snort and looked about him wildly. In one swift motion, he jumped to his feet and pulled out his wand, jabbing it purposefully in the air in front of him. Tonks blinked at him for a moment, her mouth hanging open, and then began to clap her hands. "Oh, well done, Sirius!" she enthused. "Fantastic! Caught me in the act, you did, sneaking tea off to the Death Eaters."

Tonks picked up the tea tray and tossed it onto the worktop with another reverberating clang. He winced so expressively that Tonks guiltily decided to make a fresh attempt to get off on the right foot. She plonked herself onto one of the kitchen chairs.

"Wotcher, mate!" She offered him a bright, if belated, smile.

Sirius lowered his wand and yawned hugely. Without looking at her, he muttered, "Sorry. Bad dreams."

Sticking his wand in his back pocket, he sunk back into his seat and dragged his fingers through his hair in an unsuccessful attempt to smooth it. As he did so, Tonks looked at the self-inflicted prison tattoos on his knuckles and wondered idly why he'd never removed them now he was free—or if not actually free, she amended, at least out. The spark of irritation she'd felt with Remus flared up again as she thought, But he's not in the least like Remus, all closed off. All I have to do is ask Sirius, and he'd tell me anything.

Pushing her irksome boyfriend from her thoughts, she resolved to be more supportive of Sirius, starting now. Giving him a sympathetic smile, she said, "So... um. How've you been, Sirius? Seems as if we never have a chance to talk properly anymore."

He fiddled with a knot in his hair with pale fingers and appeared to consider. "I feel like utter crap. But so kind of you to ask," he replied bitterly. "And do we never talk, Nymphadora? Can't say I noticed. Must be because you're far too busy banging Moony."

Tonks bristled at the unfairness of this comment, as it was Sirius who was avoiding everyone these days. He always seemed to be either up with Buckbeak or brooding over his dingy family heirlooms.

She started to say, "You know that's absolute b—" when the teakettle shrieked out a sudden whistle. Tonks rose abruptly, thankful that it had interrupted her before she could rise fully to Sirius's taunting. Somehow lack of sleep and her unhappiness with Remus were conspiring to rob her of her usual agreeable disposition. And to think she used to consider herself a morning person.

Fighting a sudden and altogether ridiculous urge to burst into tears, Tonks added tea and boiling water to the teapot. After setting milk, sugar, cups, and teapot on the tray, she carried it carefully to the table and sat down again. She swallowed against the tight feeling in her throat and said with careful calm, "Listen, Sirius. I'm not feeling so very chipper myself this morning, and so I—"

"Awww. Had a little tiff with Remy-poo? Makes a change from all that f—"

"—AND SO, I was wondering if we might call a truce, just for this morning? Please, Sirius?"

"Yeah, sure." Sirius yawned again and looked at her for the first time. He must have seen something in her face because he reached over and squeezed her hand affectionately. "Tonks, listen. I'm... I'm sorry. Shit." He scrubbed at his face with his free hand and said in a muffled voice. "I haven't been sleeping lately, that's all. Feel like Hippogriff dung warmed over most of the time. Don't know why I—"

Tonks shook her head impatiently to stem this flow of apologies. "'S'nothing. Really. Let's forget it."

She and Sirius looked at each other with faint smiles, possibly for the first time in months. Sirius did look very tired and unhappy. She pulled her hand gently from his. "Listen, d'you fancy a cuppa? Or," she found a teasing smile, "were you planning to have firewhisky for breakfast?"

"Ha bloody ha, Tonks. Yes, since you so kindly offer, I would like a cup. Two sugars, no milk."

And there was that stupid lump rising in her throat, again. She waited for it to subside before asking lightly, "Any idea how Remus takes his, at all?"

"Splash of milk."

"Thanks." She added sugar and milk to the cups. As they waited for the tea to brew, Tonks resolutely thought about not thinking about Remus. And was doing very well at it, she thought, until her mouth betrayed her by blurting out, "How do you know?"

Sirius looked at her sleepily. "Know what?"

"How Remus likes his tea. Did he ever tell you?"

"Huh?" Sirius shook his head slightly as if he thought he might not have heard her right. "Uh. Lived with the bloke for seven years at school."

"And Sirius..." Once started, she found that self-restraint was no longer possible. Not that it had ever been her strong suit. She leaned forward and spoke urgently as if her question were the most important thing in the world. "Sirius... Why did you never Charm off your prison tattoos?"

He blinked at this apparent non-sequitur. He peered at her carefully. Tonks could feel her face flushing as she waited for his answer. "Are you feeling well, Tonks? Uh... Well, I swore I wouldn't take them off until, well..." He shrugged and held out the backs of his hands to her, and she read L-I-L-Y on one and J-A-M-E-S on the other.

Tonks's insecurities about Remus, which were never far from the surface, came bubbling up. She looked away from Sirius's hands and quickly picked up the teapot and filled three cups. To her mortification, she found her hand trembling. And when she felt her eyes fill with tears, real ones this time, she set down the teapot and rose from her chair.

Sirius frowned and shifted in his seat, scratching his head. "Hey, hey. Tonks. Um. Are you—"

Turning away, Tonks sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

"Don't cry. Please. It-it's alright. You know, the tattoos. It's just a thing I—"

Turning back to him, Tonks yanked her Auror robe off the table in sudden anger and pulled it over her shoulders. Fastening the front with jerky movements, she said vehemently, "He's such an utter git!"

If it were possible, Sirius would have looked even more puzzled. "Who is?"

Tonks looked down at her fingers,still fastening the robe. She said stiffly, "Well, I must be off. I'm late. Take this tea up to Remus, would you?"

Without waiting for an answer, she pushed open the kitchen door and stalked down the hall to the front entrance of Grimmauld Place.

After the door closed, Sirius looked at the tea tray for a long moment, trying to work out what had just happened. Finally, with a shake of his head, he grabbed the cup Tonks had made for him and drained it. Then he picked up her own still-full cup and took a meditative sip. When he'd finished it, he regarded the last cup, with its splash of milk, as if it might contain the explanation for why Remus was such a git. Well. Sirius had never been much for scrying, but it wasn't the first time he'd heard a woman call Remus a git, or worse. Probably the usual reasons. He lifted his shoulders briefly, picked up the cup, and carried it upstairs.

_(continued in chapter 3)_

* * *

_**Author's note: **__The idea of Sirius having prison tattoos is from the PoA movie, not the book, but I always thought they seemed very _right_. :)  
_

_Coming up next: Sirius attempts to make a point. Remus resists. Tonks learns more about men than she ever wanted to know. But first, don't you want to leave a review?_


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's note:** And thank you to those who reviewed or added me to their alert lists. It's a huge ego boost. ((HUGS))  
_

* * *

**Had We Never Loved So Blindly****  
**

**Chapter 3**

As Sirius walked up the stairs, he could feel his irritation mounting as well. What was he thinking, getting involved in this idiocy? Why not let the screwed-up pillock get his own damned tea? And what did Tonks think Sirius was, anyway, an over-sized house-elf? It was Kreacher who ought to be delivering the fucking beverages around here. He perked up at the thought, entertaining a brief but pleasing vision of the filthy house-elf, rousted from one of his hidey-holes and muttering darkly about having to wait on the werewolf and his shape-shifting slut.

Unfortunately, Sirius didn't know where any of Kreacher's hidey-holes were, so rousting wasn't currently an option.

When he finally reached the top floor, he was in a fairly foul mood, made worse by the fact that he had to stand in the dank, rodent-smelling landing outside Remus's room for a minute to catch his breath. Twelve years in Azbakan hadn't done much for his wind.

Sirius rapped smartly on the door and then stepped in without waiting for an answer. Remus was sitting on the side of the bed with his back towards Sirius. His wand was sketching a Cleaning Charm, the unique motion of which would have been instantly familiar to anyone who'd ever attended Flitwick's second year "Health and Hygiene for Wizards" seminar. In this case, that would be Sirius.

Sirius grinned at Remus's bare back and remarked, "So you're reduced to tossing off again, huh? Bad luck. But welcome to the club." He shut the door with a sharp kick and strolled the two steps necessary to arrive at the centre of the room. "I take it Tonks only comes up to do your laundry?"

Remus responded with a two-finger salute offered casually over his shoulder before easing himself off the bed and heading to the wardrobe, a shaky looking structure decorated with a chipped bas-relief of coiling snakes. He reached in and pulled out an old tartan dressing gown, which he wrapped around himself and belted tightly. Pocketing his wand, he slumped—most inhospitably, Sirius thought—into the only armchair in the room, looking as exhausted and ill-tempered as he always did on the day of his transformation.

Sirius eyed him and tutted in mock sympathy, "You look like something that crawled out from under a rock and no mistake, mate. No offence."

Remus's lip curled. "As it happens, you don't look so bloody handsome yourself, Padfoot. Did you want something, or have you only come to annoy?"

"Wanker."

"Mm. Already established, I think." The corner of Remus's mouth twitched, but he didn't smile. "Anything else?"

"Brought you a cup of tea, courtesy of your lady love. She had to run off to her job, or she would have done it herself. You're familiar with the concept? Of a job, I mean? Thing where you contribute to society while earning yourself a bit of dosh?" He handed Remus the cup of lukewarm tea. "And thinks you're a shit, too, in case you care."

Remus took the tea, looking startled. "Who does?"

"Little Miss Nymphadora. Actually, she said 'git.' I'm interpolating."

Remus let out a half-amused, half-irritated snort, repeating what sounded like "interpolating" under his breath, and then, mildly, "Go to hell."

Sirius glanced around theatrically. "And here I was under the impression I'd already arrived. Speaking of which, this room smells like a cheap bordello. Ever consider—"

"—you'd know—"

"—washing your sheets? Reeks in here."

For a moment, Remus appeared to be reconsidering the position of Unforgivable curses in the overall scheme of life. Then he raised his cup to his lips and sipped, his face taking on the expression of bland neutrality he assumed whenever Sirius succeeded in getting under his skin.

From long experience, Sirius could see Remus arriving gradually at the realisation that he was about to be argued with rather than simply annoyed. And this invariably meant that Remus—never the world's chattiest sod—was going to Stop Talking. Not that this ever hampered him in a debate, unfortunately. Far from it. Remus was a long-time master of that quirk of the lip that implied, "You're full of shit", that lift of the eyebrow that suggested, "Bugger off." In disagreements with Remus, one generally had to supply both sides of the dialogue oneself. Never a difficulty for Sirius, except that even in Sirius's head the slippery bastard always seemed to get in the last word.

Sirius walked to the open window; tall and narrow, it overlooked Grimmauld Place's tiny park, a square of green filled with elderly plane trees. In the spring sunshine, even those trees looked cheerful, their angular new leaves shimmering in the breeze. A memory came out of nowhere: of himself as a boy climbing in that park with his brother, the plane's shaggy bark peeling beneath his fingers, and Reg laughing maniacally as they pelted each other with the spiky fruits. God, I need to get out of here.

He sniffed the fresh air pointedly and glancing at the unmade bed asked, "Anywhere clean to sit? I mean, somewhere where you and Tonks haven't been doing the deed?"

Wordlessly, Remus Conjured a hard straight-backed chair with an irritated flick of his wand.

Sirius hooked the chair with his foot and turned it backwards. Straddling the seat, he sat down facing Remus and rested his arms on the chair back. And waited. Two can play at Stop Talking, he thought with satisfaction.

For a few minutes, Remus toyed with his teacup, one finger running around the rim in a habitual nervous gesture. Finally: "She really said that?"

Sirius just stared at him.

Remus shifted uncomfortably in his chair and scuffed one bare foot against a mouse-gnawed edge of the carpet. "That is, did she say why?" Remus drank more of his tea and turned towards the window, the very image of a man who emphatically did not want to hear what his girlfriend thought of him. Or why.

Sirius frowned in thought. "My guess? Because you like a splash of milk in your tea." He laughed without mirth. "Funny old ideas women get sometimes, eh? Must be that time of the month for her, too."

Chewing at his lower lip, Remus stared into the middle distance, looking as if he wished he was anywhere but in this room with Sirius. You and me both, mate, Sirius thought.

Sirius rubbed his hands over his unshaven face and muttered, "Fuck it." He pointed a finger at Remus, the one with Lily's Y. "Listen, Moony, you're my best mate. I've loved you like a brother from the time we were eleven—"

Remus refocused on him, and his finger, in mild alarm. "Sirius—"

"—Shut it, you sorry arse—and I watched you fuck up with half-a-dozen birds before you were twenty years old. Didn't say a word to you about 'em. Not one word. Even offered to help a few of those girls pick up the pieces, purely out of the kindness of my heart. But now—"

"Sirius—"

"But now we're talking about my cousin—"

"Second cousin—"

"First cousin once removed—never argue genealogy with a god-damned Black—and I think you might want to consider—just consider, mind you—pulling your head out of your hole. Just for a change, eh? A girl like that..." He shook his head in frustration, momentarily at a loss for words, which was something of a novelty. "You need to start giving her the kind of attention she deserves," you useless berk. Finished, Sirius crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned back to see if Remus looked properly nettled. Not quite. "Oh, and in case there's any confusion on the point, I'm not talking not your dick."

Remus closed his eyes. Possibly he was counting backwards from fifty in Sanskrit, or reviewing the twelve uses of dragons' blood, or working through another of his tried-and-true calming techniques. The muscles along his jaw were shifting; Sirius suspected he was clenching his teeth.

Finally, Remus took a deep breath, looked Sirius in the eye, and began quietly, "I'm—" He stopped, let out his breath, and sucked in another one. "Sirius, I'm not in the mood right n—"

"Well, that must be quite a new sensation, from all I've heard about—"

In an instant Remus was out of the armchair, his face flushed and hands clenching at his side. Deliberately, he opened one fist and reached into his wand pocket. He didn't draw, but his intentions were implicit in every tense particle of his body.

Sirius let the silence hang between them for a long moment. He fought an insane desire to provoke this even further, to see just how far it would go, purely for the excitement of the thing. If only to make something happen around here for a change. And had it been anyone else—but this was Moony, a friend. One of the few he had left, if not the only. Sirius blinked a few times, sighed heavily, and muttered again, "Fuck it." And then more loudly, "I don't have time for this shit."

He stood abruptly, Banished the chair, and walked to the door. His put his hand on the knob and paused. Without turning around, he said, "Listen to me, Moony. She was down in the kitchen sniffling into her sleeve because you wouldn't tell her how you take your bleeding tea." He huffed out a little laugh. "You know, sometimes even I find it hard to believe how abysmally stupid you can be—have you learnt nothing these past fifteen years? She's... she's a sweet kid, Remus, and she's just starting to figure you out. So, do me a favour? Cut her loose or give it a bit more effort. Right?"

Sirius opened the door and stepped out. Closing the door, he leaned his forehead against the cool wall of the hallway. It was a change, at least, getting the last word in with that stubborn git, but... Merlin help me, I'm tired. And now a headache was beginning to throb against his temples. Shit. He definitely needed to switch to something besides firewhisky of an evening. But at this moment what he needed most was a change of company. He headed for the stairs to feed Buckbeak.

* * *

Tonks arrived at the Ministry with about thirty seconds to spare before the weekly staff meeting. It would have been more, but she'd tripped and broken the heel of her boot on the steps of Grimmauld Place. She'd had to apply a hasty Sticking Charm before limping off to Apparate from a nearby alley.

For the sake of speed, she bypassed the Ministry's lifts, sprinting up the stairs to her cubicle. Pushing impatiently through the parchments, sandwich wrappers, Daily Prophets, quills, and other debris at her desk, Tonks grabbed the status report that she'd finished the day before, and then proceeded at a more dignified fast walk to Scrimgeour's office. She skidded to a halt in front of his door just as his secretary, Lydia, was pulling it shut. Lydia gave her a conspiratorial wink and said, "Just in time, dear. And he's breathing fire today, so you'd best scoot right in."

An hour later, a thoroughly dispirited Tonks trudged out of her boss's office holding her duty sheet. As the Aurors drifted back towards their desks, Williamson fell into step beside her. He said sympathetically, "It isn't so bad, Tonks. Stakeouts can be boring, but we've all had to do them occasionally. Besides, you just might catch him, and we know how important that would be. I mean, do we really want some mad blighter going around inflicting regurgitating urinals on an unsuspecting public? Think of the mayhem!" He snickered.

She elbowed him in the side. "Thanks, Will. Appreciate the support from a seasoned veteran."

"Hey, anytime. And let me know if you need any help beating a confession out of the yob when you nail him. You probably hit like a girl," he chuckled. As they approached their desks, Williamson detained her with a hand on her arm. "Listen, Tonks, all joking aside. I was wondering if... Well, what do you say we go to the Leaky for a drink after work?"

Tonks was nonplussed. Williamson was easily fifteen years her senior and far above her in rank. She'd actually had a bit of a crush on him last year, when he hadn't noticed her at all, of course. Except for that time she broke his favourite coffee mug. She stammered, "Oh, well— well. That's sweet of you to ask, Will, but, um. I'm busy tonight." And every night, she thought. Better make that clearer. "I, um, I have a bloke I'm quite serious about is the thing."

Williamson looked surprised. "I didn't know that! Is it someone in the Ministry? How long have you been seeing him? I mean, you didn't bring him to that awards dinner we had a month or two back. I remember, because you looked—you looked well, and you came on your own."

Ah, right. She remembered that night all too well. Remus had categorically refused to accompany her, no matter how much she'd pleaded. Until that night, she'd always assumed that the reason they never went out was that Remus had no money, and he didn't want to take any of hers. But this would have been free for both of them. Drinks, dinner, dancing. A night on the town. A chance to show him off to her friends. Sirius had even offered to lend him dress robes. But he wouldn't hear of it, wouldn't discuss it at all, in fact. She'd been ready to strangle him, and not for the first time.

Finally, she said, "Yeah, um, it just didn't work out that night. You know how it is."

Williamson nodded. "Sure. Well, uh, good luck on the stakeout, then."

"Thanks, Will. See you around."

Tonks headed down to reception where she was due to meet her assigned partner for the stakeout. Her duty sheet indicated it would be someone from Magical Law Enforcement, not another Auror. When she got to the lobby, she was pleased to see Ann Ollivander waiting for her. She and Ann had shared law enforcement classes when they were both cadets: Tonks in the Auror program and Ann in MLE. They'd become close friends for a while and still occasionally worked out together in the MLE weight room, but Tonks had far less time for her friends since joining the Order of the Phoenix.

Ann was a tall, sinewy woman with short dark hair and a quick smile. Her rangy body always seemed to be full of nervous energy, which she channelled into a dedication to the martial arts. They'd both taken a course in judo as part of their cadet physical training, and Tonks had been struck both by Ann's strength and her lightning reflexes.

Ann had further impressed her by correctly guessing the core material of Tonks's wand. When Tonks had marvelled at this, Ann had shrugged modestly. "You can often recognise unicorn hair by the silvery coloured edge in your shields—remember last week when Moody had us casting Shield Charms in Magical Defence? I noticed it then. I worked summers as a teenager in my great uncle's shop. Ollivander's, you know. Sort of a family tradition, so I couldn't easily refuse, but I have absolutely no interest in wand-making. The idea of being stuck in a dusty shop like that all my life still gives me nightmares."

She and Ann both wore identical disgruntled expressions as they trudged over to the phone box that would elevate them into Muggle London. On the way up to the surface, they struggled in its confines to remove their robes. Tonks's scarlet one and Ann's bottle green would definitely not blend in with the Muggles they'd be mixing with. Tonks had transfigured both of their robes into shopping bags and was tucking her wand back into her holster when the box stopped at street level.

Ann studied her map. "Let me see... If we take that street over there," Ann pointed her chin to the left, "and then head south, crossing the next three streets, we should see the public urinal we're supposed to watch."

They walked along the crowded pavement, teeming with Muggles of all description: sweating business men in their strange suits and skinny neckties, harried young mothers pushing prams, beautifully dressed ladies with shiny handbags, shuffling old men wearing too many sweaters and muttering to themselves. Tonks loved being out in Muggle London. She never tired of it: everything at once so similar and yet so different from her own world.

Turning around to admire one youth, who was decked out entirely in black from hair to toes except for one striking lock of ice-blue hair, Tonks dropped behind Ann. As she hurried back to her, Tonks asked, "What are we supposed to do when we get there? D'you know? This is my first stakeout. Aurors don't usually do 'em; it's more in your department's line. I mean to say, we can't simply waltz into a urinal and eyeball everyone suspiciously."

Ann laughed and shrugged. "Dunno, really. I think we'll need to figure that part out when we get there. MLE didn't exactly volunteer on this one either, you know. It was that fellow in... hm... was it Muggle relations? Wesley I think his name is. He apparently looked at all the reports we have for Muggle-baiting and figured it out: for the past three Fridays in a row, someone has Charmed one of these particular urinals. Although this Wesley chap called it cursing them." She rolled her eyes. "That's why you Aurors are involved. Daaark Magic." She laughed. "So, this Friday, we stake the place out and hope to catch the loony."

They turned the corner and continued south. Ann said thoughtfully, "Wesley, though... I wonder about him. Frankly, I don't know why he cares so much, you know? It's a silly practical joke. No one's been hurt, only got a bit wet and smelly, that's all. Do you suppose he believes Dumbledore about You-Know-Who and thinks the Dark Lord has returned in order to curse Muggle loos?" Ann laughed. "If it happened in the magical community, no one would even consider sending in the law. But I suppose Muggles have to be protected from this sort of thing. I only wish it wasn't the two us who have to—"

She broke off, glancing at Tonks. "Are you limping?"

Tonks grimaced. "I fell on my way to work this morning. Grazed my shin." She looked down at her heavy-soled boots. "And now I think my heel's coming unstuck again, too. I'll do something about it when we have a minute."

When they arrived at the urinal, it quickly became obvious that they would have to position themselves inside it, or at least somewhere where they would be able to look inside. Otherwise, they'd be unable to catch their perpetrator in the act.

Tonks told Ann, "Don't know about you, but I don't fancy Disillusioning and spending the day pressed up against a dirty wall in there."

After some thought, they decided to base themselves on top of the small structure. With Ann supplying the necessary stealth and Tonks supplying the shield charms, silvery edged and all, they were soon ensconced on the corrugated metal roof, and it was to be hoped, invisible to passers-by. Ann enchanted the roof to one-way transparency so that they could peek down on their suspects. As they finally settled onto Conjured cushions and looked down through their surveillance "window," they congratulated each other on a job well begun.

Four hours later, however, they weren't feeling quite so cheery about their situation. Ann was sharing her lunch with Tonks, who hadn't thought to bring anything, and wouldn't have had time if she had. As they both munched on carrots, Ann remarked, "Get your boot off, then, and let's have a look."

Tonks had all-but-forgotten the morning's mishap as she yanked off her boot and handed it to Ann. While Ann tapped her wand along the heel, Tonks pushed up the leg of her jeans and examined her shin. It sported a large purplish bruise and felt tender to the touch, but it didn't look too serious.

Ann peered over her shoulder and remarked casually, "Oooh, doesn't that look ugly," before turning her attention back to the boot. Finally, she looked up and told Tonks, "I reaffixed the heel onto the sole as it was coming loose again. But you really ought to go back to where you bought this." She glanced at the sole. "Gepetto's, was it? 'Cos they'll have special repair charms that'll be more permanent than anything I can do. And speaking of repairs, you've done quite a nice job as well." She touched Tonks's shin lightly; there was no longer a trace of a bruise.

"Yeah, well, I get a lot of practice. You know how I'm falling over my own feet half the time." Tonks took back her boot and began putting it on.

Ann sniffed. "And you wouldn't be, if you'd just come back and train with me." Ann, devotee that she was, had been trying off and on for over a year to convince Tonks to take up judo again, claiming it would improve her coordination, and hence, eliminate her clumsiness.

"I don't have the time, Ann. I'm so busy now. What with the Azkaban breakout, I'm putting in overtime at work, and—"

"Right, right. There's always an excuse, but still—tell you what, at least let's get back to working out together, alright? We both need to do it, and it's probably the only way we'll make time. I miss how we used to hang out together."

Tonks wrapped her arm around Ann's waist, suddenly feeling sad that she'd not made time for her over the past months. "Me too, Ann. Alright, then, how about Wednesday after work? I should be able to manage it, if—"

"—Tonks," Ann interrupted, in a strangely tight voice. "Have a shufti at this."

Tonks hastily dropped her arm and knelt down on hands and knees to look into the urinal below. "What do you see?" she asked Ann excitedly. "Which one is it?"

With a trembling hand, Ann pointed to the centre urinal below them. "That one. Isn't he... Isn't that Kingsley Shacklebolt, from your office?"

Tonks immediately leaned back and closed her eyes, clapping her hands over them as Ann's suppressed laughter finally broke out. Through her chuckles, Ann said, "Oh, if you could have seen your face, Tonks. Still, I suppose I should look," she went on virtuously. "There was some thought that the mad urinal charmer might be a Ministry employee, given that this location is midway between the Ministry and the Leaky." There was a pause, and then she went on cheerfully, "Oh, my! My goodness gracious, Tonks. Look! He's—"

"Stop, stop, stop. Not listening. Not listening!" Tonks hummed a few bars of a Weird Sisters song to drown out her friend's voice and then pleaded, "Will you please shut up, Ann! Kings and I are friends. I'm friends with his wife, and I'm having coffee with them tonight. Just tell me when it's over."

"Alright, he's leaving now, you lily-liver. You can peek again. If you've got the stomach for it, that is."

When Tonks took her hands from her face, Ann was watching the scene below her with distaste. "You know, I don't think I can take seeing this many willies in one day. It's enough to put you off men entirely. Take a look at that bloke down there, the one with the green cap? He's splashing all over the porcelain, and he acts as if he doesn't even notice. No wonder it stinks in there. Men are disgusting pigs sometimes, don't you think?"

Tonks giggled down at Green Cap as she reached for another carrot. "Mm. Absolutely."

Ann looked sidelong at Tonks and added, "Of course, your fellow wouldn't come under that heading, I'm sure."

Tonks waggled her carrot stick at Ann good-humouredly. "And who told you I had a fellow, Miss Nosey Parker?"

Ann smirked and reached out to touch the faded love bite under her ear. "Elementary, my dear Tonks. Or as you Aurors would say, 'Constant vigilance!'"

They both giggled again as Tonks blushed and rubbed her fingers over the mark. "Yeah, well. He may not be a pig, but he can be extremely... provoking at times."

"Mm. Sounds interesting. Do I get to meet this extremely provoking gentleman someday?"

"Uh. Probably not, Ann."

"Oh." Ann looked disappointed. "You splitting up?"

"No. Or— I don't think so, that is. He's been..." Tonks shook her head in frustration and chomped more carrot.

"What? Don't just leave me hanging, here! He's been what? Shagging Scrimgeour? Forgetting to buy you chocolate? Charming regurgitating urinals? What?"

"Oh, I don't know how to describe it, Ann. He's lovely, really. In almost every way. But he's incredibly secretive."

"Secretive as in... seeing someone else on the side?"

Tonks shook her head.

"Well, what then? I'm dying to know about your mystery man, Tonks. Spill it."

"It's... There are some things—lots of things—he simply won't talk about, and it's driving me batty."

"Mm, that sounds lovely. A man with secrets and inner turmoil, eh? Does he pace the misty moors with a heavy tread and all?"

Tonks rolled her eyes. "This, Ann, is why we don't have these sorts of heart-to-heart conversations more often."

"And here I thought it was because up until now your love-life has always been perfect." They snickered over that for a bit as Ann had been privy to some rather unfortunate romantic incidents from Tonks's past. Ann went on, "Oh, but you know what men are. They're not sensible creatures like us, ready to share each innermost secret with their twelve very best friends. A lot of them aren't comfortable talking about the important things."

"But that's just it, Ann. It isn't only the important things. It's the unimportant things as well." She laughed to herself as she stared down at a portly gent relieving himself at the leftmost urinal. "Today, for instance, he wouldn't tell me how he liked his tea." When Ann snorted with laughter, she went on defensively, "I'm overreacting, I know. I was buzzing like a hornet this morning, but I've calmed down since. Thought I might bring him some supper as a peace offering. Sometimes, I think I'm being an idiot when he's so wonderful in every other way, but I hate that he doesn't seem to trust me at all."

Ann looked at Tonks shrewdly. "You're in love, aren't you?" Tonks was flushing pink as Ann went on. "I don't believe it. In fact, I'm floored. Whoever would've thought it of tough old Auror Tonks? Completely head over heels, and don't deny it," she raised her voice as Tonks attempted to speak. "Don't bother trying to deny it, it's written all over your face."

Tonks rubbed at her burning cheeks and didn't attempt to deny it.

Ann waited for Tonks to say something and finally prompted, "So, your love interest. He's wonderful how? I mean, he drives you up the wall, but he's still wonderful?"

"Well, let's see..." Tonks began counting on her fingers, "Kind, handsome, funny, intelligent, polite, well-read, brave, loyal, really skillful wizard... " She flushed brighter pink when she got to the last finger and added, "and, um, you know."

"Ah, I see." Ann grinned and waggled her eyebrows. "He's wonderful in that way, is he? Tell."

Tonks bit at her lip and then leaned over to Ann and whispered in her ear. Both of them covered their mouths to smother their mirth. When she had regained some measure of control, Ann punched Tonks repeatedly on the shoulder. "I can't believe you told me that, you shameless hussy."

They both continued to laugh as Ann leaned against Tonks's shoulder. "Well, Tonks, it's not as if we don't all have our burdens to bear. And if I understand you right, yours is a man who's sex on toast but hesitates to reveal his favourite colour. I haven't any advice to offer you, my poor dear. But... Tonks? If you do break it off with him, could you introduce me?"

_(continued in chapter 4)_

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_**Author's note:** The fabulous **melusin** beta'd and Brit-picked this for me._

C_oming up next: Sirius enjoys an intimate moment. Or two. But before you continue, I'm guessing you want to take a moment to review first, isn't that right?  
_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Author's note:**_ _A bit shorter than my usual, but only because I'm having to break a huge chapter into two. Thank you to everyone who reviewed. Lots of Sirius this chapter. I know it's supposed to be Remus/Tonks, but he insisted. ;)  
_

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**Had We Never Loved So Blindly**  
**by MahsaFF**

**Chapter 4**

Emmeline Vance was pretty.

No. Strike that. Idiotic understatement of the decade. She was... _stunning._

And the question that immediately presented itself was: Why had he not noticed this before? How was it possible that he had overlooked the kind of beauty that sucked the air right out of a man's lungs until he had to remind himself to breath?

He watched, entranced, as she approached him. The firelight shone and glinted on her hair. Gauzy robes emphasised the sway of her body. She looked up, and met his gaze, and smiled... And the moments passed. The world revolved on its axis. But trivialities like time and space were no longer worthy of his attention. There was nothing but Emmeline. Her eyes. Her hair. Her lips.

So, of course, Sirius smiled back at her.

But it... it wasn't exactly Emmeline. Or, it was, but she seemed... different.

_How?_

Younger? Happier? Sirius frowned. But before he could give this puzzle, this Emmeline, more than the briefest consideration, she was—

There. _Right there. _An arm's length away, and all he had to do was—

He reached out his hand, but she stepped back with a coy glance that produced a strangely tight sensation in his chest, and... unfastened her robes. Shrugged them off bare shoulders and let them fall to the ground.

_Oh sweet Circe._

A shiver ran down the length of Sirius's body as he took in the vision before him. Perfect pink-tipped breasts. Smooth belly. Hair cascading over shoulders and back. His reaction surprised him with its intensity; it wasn't as if he'd never seen—

Stepping over her discarded clothing, Emmeline closed the gap between them, and the blood deserted Sirius's brain for a far more congenial location further south. He was feeling slightly dizzy. _Breath,_ an inner voice suggested.

And it occurred to him, despite the fog clouding his mind, that he should say... something. He swallowed. Wiped damp hands on the sides of his trousers. But no words came. For the first time that he could remember, a naked woman had rendered Sirius Black speechless.

Emmeline didn't seem to mind that he was tongue-tied. She lifted her hands to his shoulders and trailed her fingers down his arms, so lightly that Sirius wasn't sure he could actually feel them: Just the warm tickle of his skin as it responded under her touch. He tried to put his arms around her, but she caught his hands and held them gently at his sides.

She leaned close, so close that he could feel her breath on his mouth and the heat of her body through his clothes. When she brushed her lips against his, a rush of desire flooded Sirius's brain and body. Eagerly, almost desperately, he tried to deepen their kiss, but she turned her face aside so that his lips fell on her warm cheek instead.

Sirius let a small sound of protest, and Emmeline quirked an eyebrow at him. She grazed her lips over the bridge of his nose, down the slope of cheekbone and back to his lips. She shook her head in playful admonishment, as if reminding him of some agreement they'd made. An agreement that, for the moment at least, he couldn't recall.

Not that it mattered, not when she was—

Her warm mouth traced a path of fluttering kisses along his jawline. Sirius could feel her lips smiling against his skin, as if she thought that trapping his hands at his sides and kissing him breathless was the most improbable, the silliest thing she'd ever done. A corresponding bubble of laughter rose up in Sirius's chest, because she was right. Of course she was.

It was utterly absurd. The two of them, together, so absurd—

Emmeline gradually moved her lips lower to caress his neck and lick the hollow at the base of his throat. His head tilted back and his breathing began to grow ragged. He wanted—no, needed—to touch her, to explore every inch of her. And at this thought, her fingers released his hands, which immediately celebrated their freedom by travelling over her thighs, her rounded bottom, up her back to the delicate skin at the nape of her neck.

His pulse was pounding so strongly in his ears that he wondered if Emmeline could hear it, too. Her fingers sent teasing strokes over his shirt, along his chest and ribs, as his own hands continued to wander everywhere on her silky skin.

He gave himself up completely to the sensations coursing through him. It had been a long time since he'd touched and been touched by a woman; so long that it seemed to belong to someone else's life entirely. Light-headed with desire, Sirius wrapped his arms around this woman—this beautiful Emmie—and drew her close.

She responded by arching herself against him, and the pressure of her bare body ignited fireworks along his entire nervous system. It could have been something out of one of his naughtier dreams: His erection straining in his trousers, the hard peaks of her nipples grazing his chest. It was pure, driving lust, unadulterated by caution or indeed any thought.

Whatever had seemed strange to him about this at first, well... he wasn't fussed about it any longer.

Her skin was incredibly soft, and she smelled of sunshine and fresh air and open spaces. Sirius let himself simply _feel_. One hand moved up her belly to fondle a full breast, a taut nipple, while the fingers of his other hand tangled themselves in her shining hair. Her skin was so warm and alive under his touch that he couldn't have taken his hands away to save his life.

Emmie nuzzled his neck, and finally, finally lifted her face to his.

This time, when his mouth found hers, she met him joyfully. Exploratory first kisses quickly grew deeper and more impassioned. Her lips parted, and if he had been tongue-tied before, he certainly wasn't now. His tongue slipped into her mouth, sliding and twining against her own in a kind of unbridled urgency as his hands slid from her waist, up her spine and into her hair. He felt her shiver.

For a long time, Sirius forgot about everything else, wrapped up in the taste and feel of Emmie's lips and tongue. Her fingers threaded through the hair that hung just below his collar, the tips of her fingers stroking the skin beneath it. He was ablaze everywhere she touched. And when one hand moved lower and cupped him through the tight cloth of his trousers, Sirius broke their kiss with a groan, his entire body thrumming with need.

Sirius could feel his control starting to slip as he struggled for breath, his heart thudding wildly in his chest. Emmie continued to stroke him, until he was gasping and impossibly hard. His head was swimming. He didn't think he'd ever been so completely aroused, and he knew he wouldn't last much longer. His mind tried desperately to frame a sentence, a plea—

As if reading his mind, Emmie gently pulled herself from his arms. She bit her lower lip shyly, and then sank to her knees in front of him. She ran her fingers up his thighs, lightly scratching with her nails. Glancing up at him through her long lashes, as if to ask permission, she reached to unfasten his—

_"SQUAWK! SQUAAAWWWK!!"  
_  
Sirius's eyes shot open in alarm. Heart thudding against his ribs, he leapt to his feet from the dirty floor and grabbed instinctively for his wand, only to put it back again as he took in his surroundings: Tattered velvet drapes. Dung-spattered Persian rug. Ornate panelling streaked with filth. In other words, Mother's bedroom or, to use her preferred word, _boudoir_.

And reclining in the middle of her canopied bed was his loyal companion-in-exile, Buckbeak.

Sirius flexed his shoulders to work out the kinks he'd acquired from napping on the floor, surreptitiously adjusting his trousers at the same time. Buckbeak regarded him with well-practised disdain, and Sirius tried not to look sheepish. Being the dominant species in a relationship ought to count for something, after all.

Sirius had come into the room earlier that morning, with the intention of feeding Buckbeak, only to find the hippogriff fast asleep in his— whatever-it-was: Nest? Den? Boudoir? The last thing Sirius remembered was sitting down to wait, leaning against the wall and, apparently, going to sleep.

_To sleep,_ he thought with a small puff of laughter, _perchance_ _to dream._ And the dream had been a lulu. It was impressive, actually, in a bizarre sort of way, the lengths to which his unconscious mind would go. But still. He combed his hair with his fingers and muttered, grinning, under his breath, "What next? Wet dreams about Poppy Pomfrey?"

Buckbeak rustled his wings impatiently, looking as if he might be considering another squawk. Sirius stopped raking at his hair and shot the hippogriff a covert dirty look. Covert because—all-around stalwart fellow though he undoubtedly was—Bucky did have just the merest tendency to become temperamental if the courtesies weren't strictly observed.

Sirius bowed low. "You rang, sire?" Luckily, hippogriffs also tended to miss sarcasm.

Buckbeak inclined his head—rather regally, it must be admitted—towards a bag of dead ferrets in the corner.

Sirius stooped over the bag and rooted through it for a scrawny one. Not that he held a grudge for Buckbeak's untimely interruption: His finicky feathered friend typically deigned to eat the poorest specimens only at his first, hungriest, meal of the day. And Molly, that most virtuous and thrifty of women, insisted that Buckbeak eat all of the ferrets in the bag before she'd pay a visit to the Magical Menagerie for more.

Sirius tossed Buckbeak a bony bundle of fur, which the hippogriff snatched from the air and began to tear apart with relish.

While Buckbeak ate, Sirius leaned against the wall and thought about his dreams, which in recent weeks had become increasingly vivid and—present case excepted—disturbing.

His first dream that morning, the one thankfully interrupted by Tonks, had been a deeply unpleasant nightmare in which his cousin Narcissa and her posturing git of a husband Malfoy had been plotting to kill baby Harry. He'd desperately tried to warn Lily and James, telling them to get out of the house, to take Harry and _run_. But he couldn't get them to pay him the slightest attention. Lily kept giggling at James while he danced (_danced!_) to something playing on the WWN. Sirius shuddered slightly, as the memory of a gyrating James helped remove the last, lingering effects of his second dream.

_"Squaaaawk!"_

Buckbeak preened his feathers and looked expectantly at Sirius, who obediently dug through the bag for another fuzzy treat and tossed it over.

Now that second dream had been... _strange_. Strange, but—to look on the bright side—infinitely preferable to a nightmare. Grinning again to himself, Sirius wondered if he might actually be going completely, barking mad at last. That would be something: a mind to match the insane image on his wanted poster. If so, it seemed that being mental had its compensations. He laughed outright at this, causing Buckbeak to gave him a startled glare.

With a last chuckle, Sirius rubbed his forehead vigorously with his hands, as if to scrub the image of a wanton Emmeline Vance right out of his brain.

When Buckbeak had eaten his fill, he padded around the room for a few minutes, making small dissatisfied sounds in the back of his throat as he pecked into corners and peered wistfully through the tall windows. Finally, he settled back into his makeshift lair with an air of resignation.

Sirius knew exactly how he felt.

Buckbeak stretched out on the untidy pile of embroidered quilts and silken sheets, exuding an air of well-fed benevolence like some oriental potentate. He let out a low chirp, an invitation for Sirius to groom him. After a great show of reluctance that was, in fact, entirely feigned, Sirius sat down on the counterpane beside Buckbeak to stroke his powerful back and scratch the short feathers just behind his ears. It was a familiar and soothing routine for both of them.

Although Sirius would never have admitted it to a soul, the time he spent in the hippogriff's company was far more enjoyable than anything else he experienced at Grimmauld Place. Theirs was a straightforward relationship, without any of the bitter emotions that seemed to well up in him whenever he came into contact with people. In Buckbeak he found the warmth and simple comfort of another living being, uncomplicated by feelings of anger, frustration, anxiety, jealousy.

Sirius offered up a belated but fervent apology to the crazy old cat lady who used to live across the square, a harmless and no doubt lonely spinster whom he and Reg had mocked at every opportunity. Who would have predicted, then, that he'd end up as a crazy old hippogriff man himself?

Buckbeak leaned his head against Sirius's shoulder and affectionately poked him in the neck with his beak. The hippogriff let out an odd little clucking noise. When Sirius didn't respond, he did it again. Sirius smiled.

"You want to talk, Bucky?" After almost two years together, it still amazed Sirius how well they understood each other.

Sirius hadn't any idea if it was true of all hippogriffs, but Buckbeak adored the sound of a human voice; it lulled him into a state of sleepy contentment as nothing else could. The phenomenon reminded Sirius of tales he'd loved as a small boy, where adventurers would befuddle fearsome beasts with songs, or riddles, or words of enchantment. During their time together, Sirius had soothed his friend with a wildly mixed assortment of verbiage: drinking songs, fairy stories, poems, including the odd ribald limerick—Bucky was especially fond of the man from Nantucket—in short, anything he could dredge up from his Azkaban-addled memory. Bucky wasn't choosy.

"Alright, keep your feathers on. Let me think of something," Sirius grumbled. Buckbeak growled back in contentment and settled his taloned front claws on Sirius's lap. Sirius frowned blankly at the dark panelling on the opposite wall, waiting for a memory to emerge. His eyes happened upon a small portrait of his uncle Alphard as a young man. Alphard winked at him, and Sirius winked back.

_Perfect._

He looked down at Bucky and raised an eyebrow. "Well, mate, what do you say to the story of mad Orlando? There's a hippogriff in it. Like you. Ridden by a wizard. Like me. And they're off to rescue a Fair Maiden." Sirius smiled rather sadly. "And we'd enjoy that, wouldn't we?"

Taking a deep breath, Sirius started with the first stanza that came to mind.

_"No empty fiction wrought by magic lore,_  
_But natural was the steed the wizard pressed;_  
_For him a filly to griffin bore;_  
_Hight hippogriff. In wings and beak and crest,_  
_Formed like his sire, as in the feet before;_  
_But like the mare, his dam, in all the rest..."_

As he pattered on in iambic pentameter, Buckbeak began to nod his head gently in time to the cadence of Sirius's voice. Sirius didn't know all of the words to this rather overblown epic. Not nearly. But his uncle Alphard had used to recite when he was drunk, and Sirius had loved listening to it as a lad. He chanted stanza after stanza as they floated into his mind, and if Bucky noticed any lapses in the story's continuity, he didn't complain.

Eventually, the poem had Buckbeak snoring steadily. Sirius let his voice grow quieter for a few lines, and then stopped. He whispered to the sleeping hippogriff, "That'll be us, my friend. Someday soon. Wizard and hippogriff riding off on an adventure, just like Rogero." He ran his palm down Buckbeak's warm pelt, which was rising and falling steadily. He went on softly, "I know you hate it here, Bucky. I'll get you out. _Soon_, I promise. We just... need a plan."

With a sigh, Sirius looked down at the unconscious hippogriff, wishing for the hundredth time that he also had that enviable ability to sleep for twenty hours a day. At that instant Sirius's stomach growled, loudly enough that Buckbeak snorted in his sleep. Sirius checked his watch. It was well past noon. High time to eat, seeing as he'd had only two cups of tea that day.

And thinking of tea, he was reminded of Moony. A pang of guilt rose up when he thought about what he'd said to Remus that morning. But only a faint pang: It wasn't as if the man didn't have it coming to him. But the poor berk couldn't help being pants with women. Never could.

In any case, Moony had treat in store for him this afternoon, little did he know it. Sirius smiled. He'd already fed one friend today. It was time to feed another.

Sirius headed back up the stairs to Remus's poky little room. He pushed open the door, saying, "Rise and shine, buttercup. I'm making you a—"

But Remus wasn't in bed. Sirius glanced around the room uncertainly as if he might have overlooked him, a near impossibility in so small a chamber. His dressing gown lay on the rumpled bedcovers, but definitely no Remus. Odd. It looked as if he'd dressed and gone downstairs. Remus usually felt so rotten on the day of his transformation that he spent most of the day resting.

Sirius decided that Remus must have gone down to the kitchen to forage. But Remus wasn't there either, as Sirius found when he arrived in that basement room. However, the mystery was now solved because, having eliminated the first two possibilities, he was left with only one. Remus was in his retreat, his haven, his home away from home, otherwise known as the library.

The question of Remus's whereabouts taken care of to his satisfaction, Sirius peered into the chilly cabinet where Molly kept the meat: Mince, bacon, chops. Now where—? Ah. There in the back corner he spotted the white paper-wrapped package he'd cajoled Molly into buying for him a few days ago.

He took two plates from the cupboard and set them on the worktop next to the package. With reverent movements that wouldn't have been out of place with the crown jewels, Sirius opened the heavy white paper, bearing the stamp of the butcher his mother had always patronized, to reveal two thick slabs of meat, garnet red except where creamy fat rippled through them. His mouth watered. Molly's meals were undeniably filling, and probably healthy, but she and Sirius failed to see eye-to-eye on a man's occasional need for a big, juicy steak. Worse luck for poor old Arthur.

Grabbing a knife, Sirius skewered the larger of the two steaks and lifted it. He admired it front and back for a moment before putting it back with a little huff of regret and poking his knife into the smaller one instead.

With the meat dripping red into the sink, Sirius swished his wand and said, "_Flamma!_" A blue-white flame burst from the end of his wand and flickered against the meat, beginning to char it almost instantly. Sirius carefully moved the flame over the steak as the delicious smell of flame-broiled beef filled the air. Bits of grease and juice dripped off the end of the meat into the sink.

When one side was fully browned, he twisted his wrist to expose the other and cooked it with equal care.

Placing the finished piece lovingly on a plate, Sirius speared the larger uncooked one with his knife, held it over the sink. Flicking his wand again, he murmured, "_Tepidus._" An orange glow briefly surrounded the steak and then faded. Sirius poked the meat in a few places with his finger. Not quite warm enough. He cast the spell again, poked again, and was satisfied.

Placing the blood-warm meat on the other plate, he grabbed a couple of forks and knives, levitated the plates, and made his triumphant way to the library.

_(continued in chapter 5)_

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_**Author's note:**_ _The quote is from _Orlando furioso _by Ludovico Ariosto.__  
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	5. Chapter 5

_**Author's note:**_ _I'm sorry it took me so long to update. Despite my attempts to keep it within bounds, this chapter grew and grew. I hope you enjoy it. I think it's fairly decent, but then I'm the annoying sort of person who laughs at her own jokes, so who am I to say?_

_When I started writing this story I hardly dared hope for even a handful of reviews, but now that I've received a healthy armful, it appears that I'm still immoderately greedy for more - LOL. Heartfelt thanks to those of who took the time to review and send encouragement with the last chapter: __**Aeshan, sophie-hatter, Friar Freaking Lawrence, Koolness, Esme's Favorite Daughter, zena, pygmygirl, Malianani, Tierful, GumyGrape5794, tricey88**_

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**Had We Never Loved So Blindly**

by MahsaFF

**Chapter 5**

Sirius strolled down the dim hallway towards the library, levitating his goodwill offering to Remus in front of him. He was aware of a pervasive sense well-being—or was it smug satisfaction?—they did feel rather similar. Whatever it was, he hadn't been this cheerful since Harry had visited at Christmas. Why was anyone's guess. Had it come from that bizarre dream or, a disturbing thought, from doing a good deed for Remus? Merlin forbid he should turn into one of those smarmy Wizard Scout types. His second cousin Altair, for example—a substantial blot on the family landscape if ever there was one—had made life miserable for man and beast by constantly dashing about inflicting acts of kindness on an unwary populace.

Whatever the reason, Sirius meant to enjoy the mood while it lasted. Tipping a jaunty wink to the elves heads mounted on the wall, he made his way through the hall towards a shaft of sunlight marking the library's open door. The aroma arising from the two steaks—medium well done for himself, very rare for Remus—was enticing, and Sirius imagined that he could detect a faint twitching of elven noses as he passed. The rest of the Order viewed the heads with ill-concealed disgust, but it was different when one had grown up with them.

Arriving at the library, Sirius nudged the door wider with his foot and floated the plates into the room. Remus was roosting in his favourite place, a table near the sunny window overlooking Grimmauld Place. Staid leather tomes and rolls of parchment were strewn about him in something not unlike wild abandon: on the table, on the floor, and heaped onto nearby chairs.

Sirius grinned at the familiar scene spread before him. Wherever Remus went, he managed to make himself the eye of his own little academic hurricane of books, papers, quills, and ink. Sharing a dormitory with him for all those years had been a challenge in that regard. Although James always claimed that a chief factor in finally snagging the woman of his dreams had been his undeniable prowess in cleaning charms, a skill honed in the thickets of debris that Remus managed to accumulate in their seventh floor room.

But excepting the clutter that had accreted around Remus, the library was tidier than any other room in the house, thanks to Molly's efforts. Efforts she'd made entirely on Remus's behalf, Sirius reflected a little grumpily, as she positively doted on him for some unfathomable feminine reason. The doxie-eaten carpet and draperies were reasonably clean, and the bookshelves looked as if they'd been dusted within living memory. Even the windows sparkled cheerfully, letting in the leaf dappled light of a spring day.

Remus, on the other hand, was not sparkling. He was hunched over a thin quarto volume and frowning at the words as if they'd done him some injury, which—given the nature of the books in the Black family library—wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility. His face was pale except for red spots high on his cheekbones and his eyes had a feverish glaze. He was rapidly jotting notes with one hand, while resting his forehead on the other and gripping his fringe somewhat tensely.

_Oh, yes,_ Sirius thought, as he watched Remus's battered quill jabbing with more force than was strictly necessary at an inoffensive sheet of parchment, _definitely tense._ As usual on the day of the full moon, Remus strongly resembled a man who'd been hitting the Pepperup potion too hard.

Remus had yet to notice Sirius in the doorway. Or he had, of course, _noticed_ him. From extensive past experience, Sirius had learnt that it was impossible to sneak up on the man, and most especially when one's presence is being heralded by an overpowering odour of beef. To put it more precisely, Remus had yet to acknowledge Sirius's presence. Which could mean one of two things: either he was absorbed in his work, or he was still irritated about this morning's little conversation. Sirius wasn't overly fussed about the second possibility; no man stuffed to the gills with Fitch & Sons' sirloin could remain irked for long.

Sirius cleared his throat and in what he considered a highly creditable imitation of a house-elf, squeaked out, "Young master, I is serving your luncheon. Please, kind sir, you will dine now?" He ducked his head and smirked subserviently, congratulating himself on achieving the perfect blend of deferential and sardonic that Migsy, his father's valet, had always managed.

Remus unknotted fingers from forelock and frowned towards Sirius, his quill still poised over the parchment. Without missing a beat, he made an imperious gesture towards the settee and low table in the middle of the room and replied austerely, "Put it there, please, Blacksy," but ruined the effect with a sudden grin that lit up his drawn face. He placed a scrap of parchment in his book, closed it and, unfolding his long legs, rose from his chair.

Sirius levitated the plates carefully onto the table as Remus came over for a closer look, hands stuffed into the pockets of his worn trousers. Closing his eyes, Remus took a deep sniff.

"_Steak,_" he intoned reverently. "But where—? How—?" he asked. His wondering expression was rather amusingly emphasised by the strands of hair he'd been gripping a moment before. They were standing on end like a series of exclamation points.

"Yes, indeed. I come bearing meat. And cutlery." Sirius tossed down forks and knives with a clatter. "I've generally found that a colossal steak is worth a thousand apologies. At least, it worked for my mum when she rowed with my dad. Reckoned you'd be feeling the strain a bit before the moon anyway, what with Molly feeding you up on pasta and sprouts and puddings. Bah." He shuddered dramatically.

Remus conjured two scarlet napkins, one of which he tossed to Sirius with a lopsided smile. "No apologies between us, Padfoot. You know that."

And it was true. Remus didn't hold grudges, even when well deserved. And although Sirius had benefited from that trait more times than he could count, he did occasionally feel that this turning the other cheek business could be taken too far when there were so many miscreants well worth resenting. The name Snape came to mind. And even Dumbledore had his moments. But beggars couldn't be choosers.

"All the same, I oughtn't to have said—" Sirius began.

"Stop."

"I only wanted to—"

"Sirius." Remus cut him off. "You're talking to the person who let his best friend languish in Azkaban for roughly a dozen—"

"That has nothing to do with—"

"_So_ you will kindly permit me to be magnanimous over the trivial matter of your twitting me about my— about Tonks."

"It's not at all the same—" Sirius broke off when he saw Remus's mouth tightening. The werewolf's temperament got a trifle frayed around the edges on the day of the full moon, so Sirius hastily changed tack and said, "But, uh, when you put it like that, right you are, mate."

"And I..." But whatever Remus was going to say, he dismissed the thought and instead dropped down beside Sirius on the settee.

Picking up his fork and knife, Remus paused for a moment with them suspended over his plate. Then he gestured to the steak with his knife and said simply, "Thank you, Padfoot."

"Tuck in, young master."

Remus mouth twitched. "Yes, Blacksy."

They ate in companionable silence for several minutes, and Sirius, who had been watching Remus from the corner of his eye, noted approvingly that his gift was being treated with all the respect it deserved. However, after getting himself around a healthy portion of the steak, Remus set down his plate with an air of purpose that put Sirius, who recognised the signs, slightly on guard.

But when Remus did speak, it was only to ask mildly, "What have you been up to this morning, Sirius? I looked for you after we—" His voice was tinged with something that might have been embarrassment. "After you left my room."

Sirius chewed. "Hm." Swallowed. "Well. _Technically_, I was with Buckbeak." His eyebrows invited Remus to ask.

And Remus, who could generally be counted on to be obliging in that way, obliged. "And by _technically_, you mean...?"

"I mean that in body I was in Bucky's room, but in spirit," Sirius glanced right and left as if someone or something—doxies, perhaps?—might be listening. Lowering his voice and leaning closer, he repeated, "_In spirit_, I was cavorting with... Emmeline Vance." He sat back and regarded Remus gravely.

Remus's forehead crinkled in confusion for a good two seconds, possibly even three, not that Sirius was counting, before comprehension dawned.

"Good dream, was it?" Remus's lips were puckered with the effort not to laugh. "Er, Sirius, you do know that Emmeline—"

"I know. I know! Give me some credit. But I have no way of controlling— I mean, it's not as if in my remotest imagination I'd ever—"

Sirius broke off with a shamefaced grin. He turned his palms up helplessly, a poster boy for virtue and modesty.

"What can I say?" He felt a satisfied smirk creep onto his face. So much for virtue. "As it turns out, my remotest imagination is more creative—_far_ more creative—than I've ever given it credit for." He licked the tip of a finger and drew a line in the air. "Yet another hidden talent of Sirius Black, revealed." So much for modesty.

Now Remus did let out a small huff of laughter. "I hate to break this to you, but as a talent, it's dubious. And my advice would be, keep it hidden. In future—and I trust you'll make note of this, Padfoot?—I'd prefer to remain in ignorance of your, er, nocturnal emissions."

"Drag your mind out of the gutter, Lupin!" Sirius said reproachfully, a hand hovering over his heart. "You wound me. Grievously. I said _cavorting with_, not— And for your information," he continued with prim rectitude, "it wasn't nocturnal. Nearer to lunchtime, I'd say. _And_ I had no opportunity to actually emit, because Buckbeak—"

Remus buried his face in his hands in silent protest.

"Er. Too much?" Sirius asked innocently.

"Mm." Remus ran a hand through his hair and started shaking his head at the floor. In admiration, no doubt. Sirius noticed that his exclamation points had wilted into half-hearted question marks.

"Well, thank you for sharing, Sirius," Remus finally said, looking up again and grinning. "Although how I shall manage to face Emmeline at our next meeting, I have no idea."

A symbolic protest. They both knew that Remus was so poker-faced that he could have faced down, without turning a hair, the wrath of a McGonagall who had just discovered her office stuffed to the brim with catnip. As he had, in fact, done. Twice. The Marauders having unanimously decided that they would bookend their careers as Hogwarts troublemakers with the same prank.

The smile had faded from Remus's lips to be replaced by a more serious expression, and Sirius hastily took up his knife. He fiddled with it to avoid Remus's gaze. He had an idea what might be coming.

After a short hesitation, Remus remarked with careful casualness, "So. A morning nap? I take it you're still not sleeping well?"

Sirius considered a few answers, the most appealing being, "None of your damned interfering business." But it probably wasn't a good idea to argue his right to privacy after he'd poked his own nose so spectacularly into Moony's affairs just this morning. Which Remus had probably taken into account. The underhanded git.

Finally, Sirius replied, "So you intend to take that line with me, do you?"

"Yes."

Definitely a git. Tonks had that one right. Sirius sighed. "Oh. Well. Carry on, then."

But Remus didn't speak. Sirius continued to play with his knife, perhaps a trifle belligerently, spinning it round his thumb over and over with quick movements of his fingers until it was almost a blur of silver. It was a trick he'd performed to general acclaim at Hogwarts, most often with his wand but occasionally at meals with a knife. For a time everyone was having a go at it, without notable success, until that dozy prat Davy Gudgeon thought to try it with his Potions knife and almost severed a finger. Madam Pomfrey had put her foot down after that, which effectively quashed the craze.

Remus was accomplished at waiting, and he let the silence stretch out between the two of them until Sirius couldn't stand it. Until he knew Sirius wouldn't be able to stand it.

_Get it over and done with, just like a visit to a Healer,_ Sirius told himself, and reluctantly he muttered, "No, I haven't been sleeping all that well, if you must know."

"Are you—?"

"Unlike you, I don't have the luxury of dipping my wick in—"

"Sirius."

Sirius shut his mouth and watched his knife spin, feeling the prickle of Remus's calm scrutiny on the top of his head.

"Are you having nightmares?" Remus prodded.

"From time to time." He stopped the stupid knife trick and looked up to find Remus watching him with an eyebrow skeptically raised.

"Alright, yeah, most nights," Sirius admitted grudgingly, tossing down the knife with a flick, so that it quivered point down in the mahogany table. "Been getting them ever since the Azkaban breakout a few month ago, seems like. Lately, they've all been about my cousin Narcissa and that puffed up Malfoy arsehole she married. Dunno why, when there are so many worse people to dream about. Voldemort, for instance. Although occasionally, my other dear cousin gets a starring role—my cousin _Bellatrix_, Moony, no need to glare at me like that—"

"I wasn't—"

"Nauseating bint. Reckon her fondest dream is to go down on Voldemort twice a day, or any of his pals for that matter." At these last words, Remus flushed, and Sirius thought with brief surprise that he'd embarrassed him. Getting old. The young Remus would never have been so prudish.

"Yeah," Sirius continued, dismissing the thought. "Completely cracked, Bella was, even before she met old Voldie. She'd be in St. Mungo's by now if she hadn't ended up in Azkaban first. The things I could tell you about that one."

His mind roved over what he knew of his cousin's teenage escapades. Some were family scuttlebutt; others, he'd actually witnessed. "Comes of all that inbreeding in the old families, you want my opinion. Sometimes I think I'd like to catch her even more than old Voldie." He waved his hand airily. "For besmirching the family name and whatnot. But it's probably a case of find one, find the other. Can't imagine Bella moving out of reach of the fucker's prick, if he even has one anymore. You s'pose he does?"

But the trouble with old friends is that they know all of your tricks. And this friend wasn't about to let himself be drawn off the subject, even for an enlightening discussion of the state of the Dark Lord's reproductive organs. Instead, Remus leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, and peered at Sirius through his fringe.

"The dreams, Sirius?" he prompted.

Well, it had been worth a shot.

Sirius licked lips that had suddenly gone dry. "Pointless to ask me that. They're nothing special. Nothing... prophetic. No visions like Harry's had. Just. Yeah. Nine nights out of ten, nonstop bloody nightmares."

He pulled his mouth into a humourless grin. "With the occasional inappropriate-but-impressively-realistic fantasy girl tossed in for... call it comic relief."

Slumping down on the settee, Sirius stared out the window at the plane trees. "I don't know, Moony. I want... Well, I want a lot of things, but... I'd enjoy a night of sleep without the inscrutable messages from my subconscious, you know? Sometimes I think I might actually be going mad."

"You won't do anything stupid, will you, Sirius?"

"Can't promise that, old thing. Madmen are so unpredictable."

After a pause, Remus suggested tentatively, "Have you considered a dreamless sleep potion?"

"Brilliant idea." Sirius gave a mirthless laugh. "You know how to brew one?"

"With my limited skills? No. Not unless I wanted to put you into an endless sleep. Which I don't. Normally. But there's always—"

Sirius shook his head. "Not on. Don't even suggest it."

"But he—"

"Remus." Sirius sat up straighter and quelled him with a severe look. "Asking Snivellus to do me a favour would be the nadir of my _entire_ existence. An existence which, may I humbly point out, has not been completely devoid of low points already." He sank back against the settee. "No. No potions. Liquor, as they say, is quicker."

"But does it work?"

"Not noticeably, but there's always a first time. And it's fun trying."

"Hm. Well, if you should change your mind, Severus is stopping by at half six or thereabouts."

"Oh. Your Wolfsbane?"

Remus nodded.

"Left it a bit late, didn't he? Moon rises at 7:32 tonight."

"He wasn't able to get away earlier. He has his Second Years this afternoon, and then career consultations with his NEWT candidates."

"You certainly seem to be well up on his schedule. Why you insist on cosying up to the sneaking bastard when he hates you—"

"I'm not cosying up. But I do think he deserves some respect. He's not had an easy time of it, and the life of a double agent—"

"Oh, come off it, Remus. He publicly exposed you as a werewolf. That alone is reason enough to hate him. And as for the espionage, the oily little shit loves it. Revels in it." Sirius held out his hands like a picture frame and gazed at it in distaste. "Severus Snape: Master Spy. He's exactly the kind of pathetic, insinuating, double-dealer who's perfect for that kind of—"

"Drop it." Remus interrupted, his voice holding a slight full moon edge, as Peter had used to call it.

Sirius didn't want to drop it, but he could see that sharing a few home truths about Snivelly would have to be shelved for a more auspicious occasion. He relieved his feelings with a heavy sigh and a resolution to make Snape regret it the next time their paths crossed.

Remus offered him a tight smile, and they began to eat again.

After some minutes, Sirius leaned back to take a moment to digest. He looked at their plates and felt a momentary pang that he hadn't thought to provide more of the trappings of an actual meal. Bread might have been pleasant. Even a veg or two. Well, another time.

He lay his head against the back of the settee, contemplating the somewhat indistinct mouldings on the ceiling. Were there actually witches coupling with centaurs up there, as Reg had once told him, or was that yet another of his brother's endless adolescent fantasies?

Remus glanced up at the ceiling as if to share whatever fascination it held and then lay his fork and knife down on his half filled plate.

"I really must thank you again, Padfoot. This meal, it's—" An uncertain smile flitted across his face, as if he had trouble taking in the idea that Sirius had cooked for him. "I'm touched."

"Should hope so, you lucky sod."

"And curious. However did you manage to get hold of—"

"Went down on bended knee to Molly—my honest word, literally on bended knee—with galleons in hand and pleading moste piteously."

"I must thank her as well, then. It was kind of her to buy them for you."

Sirius waved his hand dismissively. "She does the marketing for the Order. 'S nothing for her to pop in at one more shop."

He shifted nearer to Remus and nudged him with an elbow, none too gently. "And she didn't buy them for _me_. Oh, no, no. She agreed only after I let slip that they were for 'dear Remus'."

Sirius snorted and went on, "Got to hand it to you, mate. Don't know how you manage it, but that Man of Mystery thing you have going always did get the birds eating out of your hand. Couldn't pull off that kind of shite, myself."

Remus was working on his steak again and murmured somewhat indistinctly, "And yet somehow, against all odds, a few misguided birds have been known to peck at your meagre offerings."

"What, meagre? Me? I like that."

"You might. But girls don't." Remus smirked. "At least, so I understand."

"Gah." Sirius waved away Remus's pathetic attempts to cast aspersions on his manhood. "Well, Molly is definitely not part of the Sirius Black fan club, I can tell you that much. Did you notice her watching me like a hawk at Christmas? Wouldn't leave me alone in the same room with that little witch of hers, nor with Hermione either. Thinks of me as some sort of pervert, I expect."

"Oh, come now, Sirius. I don't think—"

"Well, I do. And meanwhile there _you_ are—a god-damned slavering werewolf, I mean to say!—and I walk into the drawing room, full of the festive spirit, planning to hang a few baubles on the tree, only to find a veritable bevy—"

"Two is hardly a bevy—"

"—a fucking _bevy_, clustering round you like bees on honey, saying—" Here Sirius lifted his voice into a breathy falsetto. "Oooh, pleeease Professor Lupin, I wonder if you could possibly you help me revise for Defence over the hols?"

"Your overactive imagination is going to get you into trouble one—"

Sirius moved even closer and, batting his eyelashes aggressively, cooed, "Oh, _thank you,_ Professor. You're _so_ much better than Umbridge." His voice returned to a grumble as he continued, "And then there's Molly, bestowing her matronly blessings over the entire lurid scene. Scandalous is what I call— Oof." This last as Remus shoved him unceremoniously back to his side of the settee.

"I won't deny that I am a better teacher than that bloody Umbridge cow," Remus returned, his mild voice at odds with the vitriol of his words. "And if it sets your mind at ease, I rather think that Ginny and Hermione are after somewhat younger quarry than me, Sirius."

"But the point remains—" Sirius stopped and regarded Remus suspiciously. "What do you mean, after somewhat— Is there something you know that I don't?"

"Please. Don't make me dignify that with an answer," Remus replied loftily. "In any case—"

"It's that saintly prefect act of yours, is what it is."

"And I here I thought I was a man of mystery."

"Both. Either. Got a million acts. You're devious that way."

Remus choked down a laugh. "In any case, Molly has a perfect right to be protective. I'm sure she doesn't judge you personally."

Sirius obscurely felt that Remus had got the better him in this conversation, but he couldn't work out just how it had happened. He could generally fit in ten words to every one of Remus's. This is what came of feeding the man some meat. Without it, Sirius would have had him cowering under the table by now instead of snarkily answering back.

But as Remus was in about as fine a fettle as one could hope for at this point, Sirius decided to ease the subject further away from his nightmares and towards a topic that was stubbornly still on his mind. Subtly, of course.

"And as we're speaking of girls, I—"

"Oh, great. Here it comes," said Remus, sotto voce.

"Here what comes?"

"You want to talk abut Tonks, right?"

"Well..."

"Go on, then. We may as get it over and done with."

"Listen, I don't want to—"

"'S alright. I decided after our... erm, conversation this morning, that I'd best let you get it all off your chest. You've been dying to for months, I know. So, have at it."

"With that gracious invitation, how can I resist? Wish I'd known you felt this way. Wouldn't have wasted my precious time beating about the bush for the past half hour."

"To help you get the ball rolling, let me start by saying, honourable, I have no idea, I have no idea, it's complicated, and I have no idea."

"What the f—"

"The answers to your questions," answered Remus, insufferably smug. He tilted his head slightly sideways and, in what Sirius recognised as a pitifully inept imitation of his own voice, drawled, "What are your intentions towards my cousin? Why in the name of Nimuë did she take up with a pillock like you in the first place? How serious is she about you? How serious are you about her? And how long do you expect this fiasco to last, given that you can't seem to stop acting like a pillock?

"Clever," Sirius muttered, as he mentally pieced together the answers and questions.

"I thank you." Remus inclined his head graciously.

"And ruddy tripe. Oh, yes, Lupin, you're very good at saying nothing cleverly. Have I mentioned that before?"

"Once or twice."

"But I do commend your honourable intentions towards my cousin, outdated though the concept may be in this modern age. As I'm sure Tonks would agree. Still, speaking _in loco parentis_, I'm extremely relieved to hear that you have no plans afoot to impregnate her and leave her weeping at the altar."

Remus inclined his head in thanks once again.

"Now," Sirius went on, warming to the subject. "As to your feelings for Tonks being complicated. We both know that 'complicated' is Remus-speak for 'I have no idea,' which seems to have become your mantra. In a nutshell, I'd say you don't know your arse from your elbow."

"Pithy." Remus observed dryly. "Original."

"Huh. I leave that sort of thing to you. _And_ it wasn't what I wanted to know, anyway. You seem to think I take a great interest in your affairs, which I assure you is far from the case. The fact of you and Tonks intrudes into my consciousness only very rarely."

"Which is as it should be, as it's no concern of yours."

"Agreed," Sirius replied. Remus lifted an eyebrow in surprise.

Sirius picked at a loose thread on one of the settee's tapestried cushions. Feeling unaccountably hesitant, he coiled the green thread around his finger. "And in all honesty, I am sorry about this morning." He glanced up to stave off the inevitable protest. "I was out of line. Too much time on my hands, you know? What you do with Tonks, what you don't do, it's between the two of you. Not my business. It's just that she's—"

"Your cousin. First. Once removed." Remus smiled. "See, I listen." And as if to prove the point, Remus clasped his hands on his knee and waited attentively for Sirius to speak.

Sirius pulled at his thread, part of a woven serpent's tongue, but it wouldn't come loose. "Right. Well. What I wanted to ask is, does she, does Tonks— I dunno. Does she remind you of anyone?"

"I don't understand."

"Not Lily? Or, say, Dorcas or Maureen? Alice? Because Tonks has... she has that same sort of cheerful, um, energy. Not sure what to call it. But... Have you noticed? That way of sailing through life as if she were indestructible. It's how I was—hell, how we all were, even you—back then. Before..." Sirius trailed off, and then finished lamely, "Before."

Remus stared at him, his expression blank.

"Huh. Right." Sirius cleared his throat. "Thing is, I don't want to see her hurt, Moony. Because I don't want her to lose that way she has of... for purely selfish reasons—no surprise there, eh?" He laughed shortly. "I— I _have_ to see it, to remind me of what it was like. What I was like. I _need_ to see it, Moony."

Sirius dropped his bit of snaky thread, shook his head, and smiled ruefully. "I'm full of shit. Listen to me. And not explaining myself at all well. But... Wouldn't it be something to go through your entire life like that? And never lose it, the way we did? Have that kind of unswerving sense of... what? Optimism? Purpose? Certainty?"

Still Remus said nothing. His mouth was slightly parted as he continued to stare at Sirius.

"So." Sirius licked his lips. "Couldn't you, um, try to open up to her a little bit? The way she wants you to, and... Just to make her happy? How hard can it— I mean... she already knows your worst secret. Remus?"

Remus, his eyes now fixed on a point beyond his clasped hands, gave a barely perceptible nod.

"And..." Sirius wondered if he could push it this far. But in for a knut. "Sorry, but... I can't help asking. Is it the same for you as it is for me? Is that why you fancy her? Because of that... positive energy? Not that she doesn't have other very obvious attractions, but... I just wondered if it... if it, sort of, rubs off on you when you're with her?"

Remus seemed to turn inward, lost for a moment in his own thoughts. He took his time before replying, "Sirius, I... I can't deny that I've taken... more than passing notice of those qualities in Tonks."

A faint wrinkle had appeared between Remus's eyebrows. As if reciting from a list, he went on slowly, "Impatient, optimistic, naive, joyful, inexperienced, idealistic, rash, confident, insubordinate, fearless... And, well, I could go on." He ducked his head self-consciously. "And on. The strengths and pitfalls of youth, Padfoot. Nothing more, nothing less. No need to elevate their significance. We've only lost them because we aren't young anymore. How could we be, with what we've seen? And far from being reasons for me to become involved with Tonks, they're the strongest argument I can think of why I should never have touched her in the first place."

Sirius paused in tribute to what was probably the longest speech Remus had made to him in a year. Then he said simply, "Point taken. But not an answer to my question, mate."

"Which you already know is yes. Yes. It is why I fancy her, as far as there can be a single reason for—" Remus swallowed. "For being attracted to another person. And sometimes it does rub off, a little, when I'm lucky." Remus's impassive face as he said this that somehow suggested unhappiness more clearly than anything else he could have done. "You're not the only one who can be selfish."

Sirius took note of the stiff set of Remus's shoulders and knew there would be no more revelations. It was time to shift into a less serious vein, to overlay something on top of their last words, minimising their import. That's what you did with Remus, if you didn't want him to scarper. He wondered if Tonks had learnt that yet.

He sucked at his teeth, thinking, and then spoke. "Well. Now that we've taken care of what you see in Tonks, satisfy my unhealthy curiosity. What on earth made her take up with someone as boring you in the first place?"

Remus visibly perked up at the thought of being boring. "As I said, I've no idea." His mouth twitched.

"Ah. The mantra again."

"True, though. It's never come up."

"Why am I not surprised to hear that," said Sirius under his breath.

"You don't think I'm fool enough to ask her? She might suddenly realise that it was all a big mistake." Remus's lips twitched again, apparently at the reassuring notion that there had been a big mistake. Daft was the only word for him.

"Oh, yeah. She completely strikes me as the kind of woman who'll dump you for an up-and-coming junior Ministry type as soon as one's on offer," Sirius observed dutifully, to buck Remus up even more. "But for now, why you?"

"I— At a guess, I'd say she's looking for nothing more than, well, company."

"Is that what they're calling it these days?"

Remus ignored this feeble sally. "She likes me well enough, and I'm here, conveniently on the spot as it were. You can imagine how hard it would be for her to find time for an outside relationship, with her shifts for the Order on top of Auror duties. Especially as she needs to keep so much of what she does a secret. The Order stick together. You remember that. How it was during the first war."

"Yeah. Except for Moody and Dumbledore, all of us back then were young and shagging like bunnies. So, you're just a convenience, are you?"

"I do my best."

"Bet you do, you jammy bastard," Sirius laughed. "So, you two really aren't serious about each other, then?"

"I—" Remus bit his lips in thought. "She doesn't need that. Not with me. You must know what could happen to her career if it became known that she was associating with one of my kind. Especially with the current tenor of Ministry thought— and I use the term 'thought' lightly," he added bitterly.

It didn't escape Sirius that again Remus hadn't exactly answered the question. But he let it slide.

"Oh. Is that why you wouldn't go with her to that dinner thing—"

"Of course."

"Huh. Didn't think of that."

"Obviously."

"You more sound like Snape every day. Comes of spending so much time in bad company."

"Whose, yours?"

"Ha ha." Sirius shifted in his seat. "You know, in some ways I'm surprised we're even having this conversation. You're getting on in years, my friend. By now you should be shacked up with some chubby witch with half a dozen screaming sprogs scampering underfoot. James always said you'd be the next one to get married. He even tried to get Lily to throw you her bouquet."

"Sirius," Remus began, "as much as I appreciate your concern—"

"Would that be about as much as a case of dragon pox?"

"—I have no wish to—"

"—discuss why you aren't married yet?"

Remus offered a self-deprecating shrug. "Not many witches would care to marry someone with my affliction."

"Have you never come close in all this time?"

Remus shook his head. "Not even remotely. I've tended to... It's been simpler to gravitate towards short-term liaisons with non-magical women."

Sirius groped his way through the euphemisms. "You picked up Muggle birds for the odd poke?"

"Er."

"I remember this subject coming up last summer. Didn't realise then that it was exclusively Muggles. It must have been a job explaining away those scars, though, or did you tell them the truth?" Sirius snickered.

"Right, and have myself carted off to Bedlam or wherever it is they keep their lunatics. No, I'd just be—"

"Mental health facilities."

"Eh?"

"Where they keep their loonies. Had it from a receptionist at St. Mungo's once."

"Honestly?" asked Remus, distracted from revelations about his love life by this enchanting example of Muggle double-speak.

"Would I lie? But you were saying?" Sirius prompted.

"Oh. Er," Grimmauld Place's resident connoisseur of verbal indirection pulled himself back to the topic at hand with an effort. "Well, I'd just be reticent about the scars and—"

"Now that's a shock."

"—generally let them speculate instead. Saves the trouble of thinking up something plausible, and women can be entertainingly inventive."

"Don't I know it." Sirius paused for a moment in happy contemplation of feminine imagination. "How did they explain them away, then?"

"Oh... sky diving accident, shark attack, motorbike smash up, rock climbing fall, war wounds... I'm a rather manly man, it seems."

"And here I've been saying that for years, and where has it got me?" Sirius asked rhetorically, giving Remus a flirtatious wink that was not returned. "Tell me, is it any different pulling Muggle totty? Or does the old tried and true method still work? You know, looking all prefecty and absentminded, and plucking at the lint on your jumper."

"Haven't you extracted enough secrets from me for one day, Sirius?"

"Yes, I suppose I have. Unless you want to explain to me why I found you swotting away at your books this afternoon instead of lazing in bed where good little werewolves ought to be."

Remus blinked at the abrupt change in topic, but replied evenly, "I don't laze. I cogitate. As a matter of fact, you missed Albus."

"Not fucking likely."

"I should have said, he stopped by this morning while you were otherwise engaged."

"Hmph," replied Sirius, less than thrilled by this rare news of their mighty leader. "The interfering old gasbag decided to honour us with a flying visit, did he? Still not saying where he's keeping himself these days?"

"I have the impression he's very busy, on the move, not keeping to one place for long. He wanted to see me, as it happens."

"It better have been urgent, for him to set you to heavy research today of all days—"

"Not research," began Remus.

"Then what do you call all this?" asked Sirius, sweeping his arm to encompass the literary chaos that Remus had engendered that morning.

"It seems I'll be travelling." Remus didn't look particularly happy at the announcement. "He didn't ask me to do any research, but I thought I'd try to prepare—"

"Well, he didn't pick the best time to drag you out of bed and send you packing for the far corners of the Earth, did he? Seeing as you'll be slightly tied up tonight lolling out your tongue and beating your tail on the hearthrug." Sirius chuckled to himself at this image. Sad that he'd got to the point where he had to laugh at his own jokes.

Remus, as per usual, ignored the witticism. "I leave tomorrow. And it isn't for the far corners of the Earth. Switzerland, in fact."

"He knows you won't be in any shape to Apparate tomorrow," argued Sirius, feeling more incensed than he knew he ought. But Dumbledore's highhandedness had a way of getting under his skin.

"No, but I'm to take a train to Germany first. There's someone Albus wants me to speak with in Munich. I can sleep on the way." Remus clearly wasn't overjoyed at the idea of this assignment, whatever it was. That stoic face was a dead giveaway.

"Why can't he send me instead? I could put on a glamour. And no one's looking for me in Germany that I ever heard."

"Give it a rest," Remus replied wearily. "They're looking for you from Albania to Zaire. And aside from that, it's a... a werewolf thing."

"Ah. That must thrill you to no end. Good old Dumbles. Kind, twinkling, and always prepared to bend all available personnel to his will. For the greater good, of course, whatever he decides that may be. If he wasn't so protective of Harry, I'd—" Sirius broke off and looked sharply at Remus. "Why aren't you leaping to his defence? When even Snape gets a good word from you?"

Remus lifted his shoulders. "I know how you feel. Albus and I haven't always seen eye to eye on things in the past."

"Oh? Care to elaborate?"

"No."

"Right. Of course." Sirius couldn't quite keep the reproachful tone out of his voice. "So... leaving tomorrow. He knows you're worth your weight in warm piss the day after the moon. Can't it wait?"

"He thinks not, and I agree. I'm to meet with the leader of a lycanthrope colony in Switzerland. The sooner after the moon I can get there, the more smoothly any negotiations should go. During the two weeks of the waning moon, the... werewolves are at their least aggressive."

"Least aggressive? I've known you for years, and I haven't noticed that you're particularly docile after the moon. No less persnickety than usual, it seems to me."

"You'll have to take my word for it. And the Munich contact may also turn out to be an important ally. It seems he's under some obligation to Dumbledore—"

"As who isn't?" grunted Sirius.

"—and has agreed to talk with me first, offer some background information on the Swiss group. Albus believes Voldemort may try to contact them, as he did in the last war. And since our top priority is to find substantive proof that Voldemort has returned, a witness whose veracity the Ministry would accept—"

"If he thinks they'd accept the word of some werewolf bloke—"

"It seems unlikely, I agree," and again Remus's voice was tinged with bitterness, "But Albus thinks it's worth a chance. Besides, there's the opportunity to, erm, get them on side for us. Although from what I've read, they're far more likely to stay neutral than to throw themselves into the fray on either side."

"How very Swiss."

"Quite."

"Well, Tonks'll miss you. 'Course, that'll make your homecoming all the sweeter." He fluttered his hand across his chest romantically, and Remus gave him a half-hearted scowl.

"I think, Sirius, that while I'm gone, you should spend some time with Tonks. Get to know her better. She is your relation, after all. It might do you good, take your mind off this place."

"I don't need anyone 'doing me good'."

"I meant, it'll do her good to be around you. Missing me as she no doubt will."

"Oh, well, when you put it like that. Hmmm. How shall I entertain a beautiful young woman?" Sirius mused aloud. "Can't very well ask her to play Gobstones..."

"You could, if that interests you," Remus replied dubiously.

"Of course it doesn't. Does anyone over the age of twelve still play Gobstones?"

"Well, there was the Gobstones Club at Hogwarts..."

"Yeah, yeah. There are always a few nutjobs who get off on picking the goop out of each other's eyebrows, but—"

"Do something else then. You were the one who brought up Gobstones. Show her your family tapestry. I'm sure she'd enjoy seeing Andromeda's scorch mark."

"Not so sure of that. If Andy had married differently, you know, it's not much of a stretch to think that Tonks would have been hitched up to me or Reg by now. That's the way my family works: Keep marrying the money back into the main branch."

"No, you should tell her. That would amuse her."

"Well, we'll see. How long will I need to mind your girlfriend?"

Remus eyes narrowed, and Sirius had the notion it was at the term girlfriend. "Oh, please, Moony. Everyone in the Order knows you're shagging each other stupid—"

"Don't, Sirius," Remus interposed. "I don't want— it's important to leave her space for a denial, if it ever becomes necessary." He frowned at Sirius and repeated, "It's important."

"Why would she—"

"If you ever gave a moment's notice to anything outside your own concerns, to some of the laws being passed recently, you'd know that she runs a grave risk in associating with someone like me," Remus interrupted impatiently.

Stung, Sirius shot back, "If you mean a stubborn, irritating—"

"You know _exactly_ what I mean. If any question of her loyalty were ever raised at the Ministry, she should be free to—"

"What does Tonks think about—"

"_We haven't discussed it, _and don't bother to make one of your snide remarks," Remus said heatedly. He took a slightly shaky breath, and went on in a calmer voice. "She's little more than an impetuous... child in some ways. Try to understand this, Sirius. If I said anything to suggest this to her, it would be like... like a red flag to a bull. She'd charge in wanting to prove that it made no difference, without a thought to the permanent harm it could do to her. What the two of us have isn't worth that risk."

"I think you're doing her a disservice in thinking that way, Moony. But I said I won't get involved, and I won't." When Remus didn't appear mollified, he added, "You have my word."

Sirius did understand Remus's concern, although he felt that, as usual, Remus was overreacting. He tried again. "Can't we just... forget it? Let's get back to my question. How long will you be gone?"

"A week, I'd say. Possibly two. But I'll definitely be heading back when the moon begins to wax."

"The aggressive thing, eh? Urge to pee into corners, gnaw on bones, hump the furniture, et cetera?"

Remus's still-nettled expression gave way in a small huff of laughter, and he said, "I think Padfoot would enjoy the first ones. I'm more the et cetera type."

"Hmph. Well, I can't say I understand. I've never seen you particularly aggressive before the moon. Grumpy, yes. Tired, yes. Uglier than usual, absolutely. But not aggressive."

Remus flushed and picked up his plate to finish the last of his meat. Looking down at it, he said quietly, "Aggression can manifest itself in ways not obvious to the casual observer, Sirius. And unfortunately it comes with a tendency to target the weakest or most vulnerable." He looked up. "Which means that it's not the best time to negotiate with a... a werewolf, especially if you are one."

"I believe it if you say so," Sirius said dubiously, and then brightened at a new thought. "Say! As you're leaving tomorrow, this is our valedictory meal. That calls for a drink, eh? And I happen to know—"

Sirius pulled out his wand and Summoned two glasses from the kitchen, which landed on the table in front of them with a faint clink.

"Sirius—"

"_Accio_, Dung's ale."

A large, corked bottle emerged from a dark recess in one of the corner bookshelves.

"I don't—"

"It's alright. Dung let on where it was. Told me I was welcome to it, loads more where this came from. Belgian, I think he said. Gets it off one of the goblins Bill works with. Apparently, our green friends knock the stuff back at an amazing rate."

"Not for me, Sirius," Remus replied, pouring water from his wand into one of the glasses. "But thank you."

"Oh. Yeah. That's right. D'you want to tell me why you stopped—"

"No."

"Or at least when—"

"No."

"Right. Well." Always worth a try. He lifted his own glass to Remus. "Cheers, mate."

And they drank.

* * *

Sirius pushed his empty plate away, wiped his mouth on his napkin, and threw it down. "Aaaah. That was good. Lavish compliments to the chef, eh?"

Remus nodded and kept chewing.

"Possibly, I will offer a genteel eructation," Sirius went on ruminatively. "Merely, you understand, as a mark of my appreciation. It does carry the slight risk that Mother will bound out of her portrait and curse me to Hades and back for manners. Big on manners the mater was, though you'd not guess it to meet her now."

Sirius finished the last of the ale in his glass as Remus eyed him suspiciously. The room felt suddenly too quiet for Sirius. The house felt too quiet. Life itself was altogether too quiet.

"Oh, what the hell," he said, and let out a loud, satisfying belch, which was followed immediately by the even greater satisfaction of seeing Remus look faintly scandalised.

In his most atrocious French accent, Sirius asked innocently, "Monsieur Moony, 'e ees eaten up weez ze envy, _n'est-ce_ _pas_? He weeshes to know ze secret of zis prodeegious weend?"

"Uh. No, actually," Remus smirked. "But he was wondering how Monsieur Padfoot ever managed to attract one girlfriend, much less the, er, scores that he claims."

Sirius held up his hand for silence to an imaginary audience. "Oh, ho!" he crowed. "Do my ears deceive me? Can it be that we have finally arrived at the momentous, uh, moment when Remus J. Lupin is asking, nay, _begging_, to sit humbly at my feet while I impart my methods for attracting members of the fair sex?"

Remus rolled his eyes. "In your dreams."

"Surprising as it may be, I generally prefer my dreams sans Remus. Try to bear up under the disappointment. I realise you wouldn't want to miss out on the tantalising parade of exotic females—the name Emmeline Vance springs to mind—"

"Wanker."

"Mm. Already established, I think."

Remus lips parted at this rejoinder, an echo of his own words from that morning. He let out a chuckle that seemed to surprise him. He appeared to struggle with himself for a moment, and then gave in, throwing his head back and collapsing into laughter against the back of the settee. Sirius looked at him affectionately and took a swig of ale from the bottle.

See what a Fitch & Sons' steak could do?

_(continued in chapter 6)_

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_**Author's note:**_ _Dozens of Youtube videos demonstrate Sirius's little knife trick, the thumbaround. And possibly I should acknowledge my partial use of the Dorothy Parker aphorism "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."_

_I'm a bit nervous offering such a huge chapter that's almost all dialogue. I'd love to hear your opinion. :)_


	6. Chapter 6

_**Author's note:**__ Right. I have to say up front that I _hate _the way this chapter turned out. So if you still want to give it a shot, on your own head be it. LOL, sort of. :P What originally was going to be one chapter has stretched into three, and this is dull, plodding part one of three. Sigh._

_Thank you to every kind person who reviewed the last chapter, especially those fellow writers who allowed me to moan and bitch at them (you know who you are!), and whose fics I could take refuge in when I needed an escape from my own frustrations. __**sophie-hatter**__, __**Tierful**__, __**pickwick01**__, __**cackles the witch**__, __**Malianani**__, __**jessica**__, __**Aeshan**__, __**ITellLies**__, __**ladylish**__, __**Velvet Storm**__, __**laura**__, __**Arinus**__, __**Esme's Favorite Daughter**__, and __**HydroJen**__._

* * *

**Had We Never Loved So Blindly  
**by MahsaFF**  
**  
**Chapter 6**

With a faint pop, Tonks appeared in the narrow alleyway that was her usual Apparition point for Grimmauld Place. Emerging from the passage between a busy pub and an equally busy Chinese take-away, she shaded her eyes and frowned at the sunlight slanting across the pavement. Her arrival here was a frustrating hour later than she'd planned, the result of losing a coin toss with Ann to decide who would write up the report on their day's work, an exercise in complete futility. The day's work, that is, although the same could be said of both the report and the coin toss. She made a mental note to use one of her own knuts next time.

The sun was still well up over the horizon, though, and she hoped she might manage an hour or more with Remus before moonrise. Thanks to the lengthening spring days, this was the first time she'd been able to get away from work in time to see him before his transformation. Tonks wondered if she'd find him noticeably different. Once, when pressed, Remus had admitted to feeling a bit ill and tired in the hours before the change, but coming from him that could mean anything from being slightly under the weather to knocking at Death's door.

Rounding the corner, Tonks crossed the street to the small park the centre of Grimmauld Place. Despite her rush, Tonks paused briefly to enjoy the sights and scents that this patch of greenery in the middle of London offered: trees in full leaf, the sharp odour of freshly rolled turf, and a few late tulips nodding above the damp earth.

Although she'd grown up in nearby Hampstead, only a handful of miles from the Ministry, Tonks hadn't come to know the city well until she'd entered Auror training a few years ago. Her mother had always regarded coming up to town—more specifically, up to Diagon Alley—with something akin to horror. Her considerable energy was directed instead at fitting in seamlessly with their Muggle neighbours and avoiding Wizarding society as far as possible. According to Dad, this had been her firm policy from the day she'd eloped with him more than thirty years before.

Tonk's rare expeditions to the city as a child had come in late summer to purchase school supplies, and London in August was a sticky, unpleasant place to say the least. Until a few years ago, town had meant nothing more to her than traffic and petrol fumes, dog droppings and pigeon shit, suffocating waves of heat rising from the tarmac, sweet wrappers adhering stubbornly to trainer soles, and a dozen kerbs to trip over as her mother chivvied her from the tube station to Leaky Cauldron to Diagon Alley and back, all the while looking nervously over her shoulder.

Crossing out of the park towards Number Twelve, Tonks almost collided with a heavy-set Muggle in a business suit who sidestepped her with surprising nimbleness. He gave her billowing scarlet robes a disapproving once-over before striding away in the direction Tonks had come, possibly heading for the pub and a fortifying drink. Calling out a chipper "Sorry!" after him, Tonks pulled her Auror robes closer about her as gusts plucked at them playfully.

_Muggles,_ thought Tonks, shaking her head. So many reacted with suspicion towards anything that didn't fit into their conception of an orderly society, even something as innocuous as red robes. And the thing was, she took enormous pride not only in her job but in her uniform as well. It was eye-catching, to be sure, but Aurors tended to be a flamboyant, even arrogant breed. The robes proclaimed boldly to the world—to the Magical world at least—exactly what she stood for and who she was: a trained soldier in the fight against the Dark Arts. The very clothes that garnered her such respect in the Wizarding community had quite the opposite effect on Muggles, it seemed. To be fair, Muggle clothes weren't looked upon with universal favour by wizards either; she recalled with a grin the arched eyebrow that Minerva had recently given her favourite ensemble of ripped jeans and lime-green jumper.

With a dismissive shrug at the inconsistencies of the universe, Tonks bounded up the front steps and let herself into the old house, pausing in the entryway to let her eyes adjust after the outdoor brightness. Unidentified male voices and laughter filtered through the open door of the library, and she wondered vaguely who they belonged to. Could be anyone, as so many in the Order made a point of gathering for Molly's regular Friday suppers.

She tiptoed down the hall past Mrs Black's portrait, giving the umbrella stand a wide berth. Her plan was to head directly upstairs to flirt with Remus, entertain him with the story of her day, and generally give him a lift. No doubt his had been a dreary afternoon; she gathered that he often spent the day leading up to his moonrise resting quietly. Afterwards, there might be enough time to cadge a bite to eat from Molly before picking up the reports that awaited her and heading over to Kingsley's flat for a thrilling evening of paperwork.

At one time she'd expected rather more glamour in working for the Order of the Phoenix—plotting and subterfuge, thrilling escapes, dramatic rescues, tense duels with Death Eaters, and the like. But aside from the attack on poor Arthur and a few other incidents, unending routine was the norm, unless you made a point of listening to Mad-Eye. He had a tendency to collar anyone who wasn't quick enough and predict dire consequences for those practising less-than-constant vigilance

Constant boredom, more like. Still, one could dream.

As she neared the library door, Tonks recognised Sirius's boisterous tone. There was something familiar in the other man's laugh, but she couldn't place it. Bill, perhaps? Remus would be pleased to know that someone was keeping Sirius busy, at any rate. Sirius was raising his voice now, speaking over the laughter.

"—wasn't too bad. Only set me some lines. I think it was, 'I must not steal Bludgers and release them in the staff common room.' And even then I'm not sure I—"

With a start, Tonks realised that the other man, the one laughing at Sirius's anecdote, was not Bill, but... _Remus._ Laughing! Not a small, polite chuckle. Not a companionable huff or a muffled snort. But a loud and quite unrestrained _laugh_.

The opportunity to eavesdrop on such a rare, unguarded moment, and one so full of mirth, was more than she was capable of resisting.

She felt a deep curiosity about everything to do with Remus: what he said, what he thought, how he occupied himself when she wasn't with him. Her need to know him was every bit as intense as his own desire for obscurity. Indeed, it embarrassed her to dwell on the extent of it. He was her first thought in the morning, the last thing running through her head each night. She was, as Ann had kindly pointed out that afternoon, smitten.

Peeking through the hinges of the door, Tonks spied Sirius grinning cheerfully. His arm was thrown across the seat back and a glass of amber liquid sloshed in his hand. His feet rested on the table in front of him, which was littered with empty plates, soiled serviettes, and half a dozen screwed up pieces of parchment.

But what drew her attention was this other man. This unknown... Remus, sprawled quite as sloppily as Sirius, and laughing so hard that he seemed to be gripping the arm of the settee so as not to slide off. She'd never seen anything like it, not in the almost-year she'd known him, and it was impossible not to be entirely captivated. She smiled through the narrow crack at this view, while her heart seemed to expand in her chest until there was no room left to breathe.

At the same time, she couldn't prevent a smoky tendril of envy from curling round her vitals as well, that it was Sirius sharing this moment with Remus rather than herself. However, as soon as she became conscious of this uncharitable feeling, she fell back on the ingrained habit of every Hufflepuff: Pushed it aside as being unworthy of the person she knew herself to be—the loyal and generous person she knew herself to be—and instead focused on being grateful to Sirius for the good he was obviously doing Remus. For the good they were obviously doing each other.

Tonks wanted nothing more than to stand where she was and continue watching and listening, perhaps to pick up a few tips on how to crack open Remus's shell so thoroughly, but it seemed dishonourable to lurk. Firmly quashing temptation, she impelled herself around the door and straight through it before she could change her mind, only to come to an awkward halt when two faces, two grinning, gleeful, almost... boyish faces, turned simultaneously in her direction.

The silence stretched to a few seconds, and then a few seconds more. She realised that she must look incredibly stupid standing there goggling at them from the doorway.

She became aware that Remus was offering her a welcoming smile. Or not really a smile, more a hint of a crinkle about his eyes. But it was hers, intended for her alone. Her heart swelled once more, leaving her feeling rather tingly. She managed a "Wotcher" and, recollecting Sirius, turned to include him in her greeting.

Sirius gave a knowing smirk. "Don't gawp, Tonks. Come and sit." He patted the cushion beside him, saying, "I could do with more attractive company after putting up with this sorry specimen all afternoon."

She walked towards the settee, feeling unaccountably shy at intruding. Their relaxed postures and evident enjoyment of each others' company again filled her with... Well. She decided to call it wistfulness.

As she approached, Remus pushed himself up from his seat to stand beside her. Perhaps because it was only Sirius in the room, he moved closer to her than he normally would have, so close that Tonks sensed the heat of his body and the coiled tension that never seemed to leave him completely. The finger's breadth of air that remained between them crackled, as always, with unspoken attraction.

"Hello, Tonks," Remus said in his slightly hoarse voice. She could feel his breath tickle across her hair.

With a quick glance at the door, Remus put his hand to her elbow in a friendly gesture, but he kept hold of her arm long enough to let his thumb brush a line down the soft skin of her inner arm. She caught her breath as her pulse leapt. She'd long since given up wondering over this, the intensity of her reaction to his simplest touch, how even this slight contact was inexplicably erotic. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck prickled in response, and she suppressed a shiver. When his hand left her, she longed for its warmth again immediately.

Taking what she hoped was an unobtrusive breath, Tonks looked away to resist the urge to behave like a shameless tart in front of Sirius. If Remus was resisting similar urges, he hid them as impeccably as ever. Not that she expected any kind of public embrace, even when the only "public" within shouting distance was his Sirius.

Through the rush of her own heart beating in her ears, she heard Remus remark, "I thought I heard you come in a minute ago." There was a hint of teasing in his voice.

She grinned uncertainly at this, torn between delight that he had been listening for her to arrive and chagrin that he might have detected her tarrying in the hallway. She offered Remus a sheepish sidelong glance and a one-shouldered shrug. His lips twitched in amusement.

Sirius, heir to the Noble and Ancient etc., had continued his ungentlemanly lounging during this exhibition of soppiness. He now coughed pointedly to recall Tonks to the real world, herein represented by The Library, Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, London. Sirius's legs still rested on the low table and between them, she noticed, a serrated knife was stuck point down into the wood. Strange. Perhaps he'd taken up mumblety peg to wile away the time? Probably best not to ask.

Giving Sirius a somewhat abashed smile of greeting for a second time, Tonks perched on the arm of the settee. She put her booted feet on the dingy olive-green cushion as Remus settled next to her. With a pang of concern, Tonks observed the way he levered himself down with the stiff caution of an old man instead of the grace she had come to associate with his movements. She looked him over carefully. He hadn't shaved; his cheeks and chin were dotted with golden stubble. At close range, she could see fine lines of fatigue around his mouth and eyes, and this morning's dark smudges were still in evidence.

"You're tired, Remus," she observed hesitantly. Ignoring the tiny warning beacon that had started blinking in her head, her hand came up as if to brush the hair back from his face. "Shouldn't you—"

She froze when he shied ever so slightly away from her fingers. Keeping her face as expressionless as possible, Tonks lowered her hand back into her lap looking anywhere but at Remus.

"Oh, let her fuss, grumpy. And she's right, you know, you look like a dog's breakfast," Sirius grunted, probably under the impression that he was helping. Because he'd noticed. Of course he had. Somehow he noticed everything inconvenient. It was only things like the washing up that went straight over his head.

Ignoring Sirius's implicit invitation, Tonks kept her hands obediently in her lap. Sirius reached out and rubbed the top of Remus's head himself, so vigorously that half of his hair stood on end. "There, that's better. Now you look exactly like... Ahhh, what's the name of that bloke, the mad arch-villain..."

"Voldemort?" Remus suggested, raising an eyebrow.

"No—"

"Grindelw—"

"_No,_ cretin. You know, in Martin Miggs? Evil blighter who's always plotting to do the dirty on poor old Martin? Yellow hair sticking up in all directions like he caught the wrong end of a Lightning jinx—"

"Oh. Dare. Professor Dickory Dare, you mean," Remus said, his voice tinged with complacency. "Experimental physicist and international arms dealer."

Tonks turned to stare at him.

"That's it!" Sirius exclaimed. "Got it in one. Well, in two. Or three. You're the spitting image. Only _his_ hair wasn't full of grey."

"Probably because his nemesis wasn't quite so hard on him as mine is," Remus returned with a meaning look.

Sirius turned to Tonks, who was still gazing at Remus with something approaching astonishment.

"I note your girlish puzzlement, Tonks," said Sirius courteously. "Allow me to explain." He pursed his lips and tapped them with a contemplative finger. "Let me see... Hm. The wizard possessed of almost god-like magical prowess, that Remus Lupin you already know."

Sirius seemed to be waiting for an answer, so Tonks nodded in cautious agreement. This seemed to satisfy him, and he went on.

"You're also acquainted, I do believe, with Remus Lupin, the gallant lover possessed of almost god-like—" he caught a look from Remus. "Uh, the gallant lover."

She glanced to Remus, who rolled his eyes in an long-suffering way that clearly communicated, _humour him. _So she inclined her head again.

"But, my dear Tonks," Sirius drawled triumphantly, jerking a thumb in Remus's direction, "I'll wager that Remus Lupin, the literary connoisseur and noted expert on _The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle_—that's a new one on you. Eh? Until today, that is. Reveals all sorts of delightful, unplumbed, and hitherto unsuspected depths to your bloke's character, now, doesn't it?"

Tonks blinked—several times, in fact—and turned back to Remus with what was probably a fairly dazed expression.

"I brought a rather extensive collection of back issues with me in my trunk when I first came to Hogwarts," Remus explained. "And apparently, I'll never live it down."

Sirius knocked back the last of his ale and belched reminiscently. "Yeah, you'd hardly have believed it, Tonks. Back in first year, this boy—father to the man as they say—looked as if a breath of wind would knock him flat on his skinny arse. Not at all the strapping fellow who stands before you today. No brawn to him, true, but with a positively encyclopedic knowledge of the entire Miggs oeuvre stuffed into his pointy head. Brilliant stuff. There was Polly Pringle—remember her?—whenever she was in peril her skirt was drawn so you could..." He turned to Remus as a thought seemed to strike him. "Whatever happened to those comics, anyway? Least you could do is spare me a hundred or two to brighten my lonely hours."

"Burned them for fuel at some point, I expect. One long hard winter. You forget the abject poverty in which you found me before I was entreated to join you at your decadent family seat."

"And yet here you are, ensconced in luxury and still looking like shit. Want me to tell you what you need, Moony?" Sirius asked.

"Not really," Remus replied, smoothing down his sandy hair, presumably to lessen his resemblance to a mad scientist. "But I expect you will anyway."

"What you need," continued Sirius, ignoring him, "Is more time to relax. You're wound up. Anxious. Overworked." He swept a hand towards the piles of books and papers near the window that Tonks hadn't noticed before.

Remus huffed dismissively. "As are we all. With your usual talent for pointing out the blatantly obvious—"

"Oi! You're always complaining that my talent is for ignoring plain fact. Can't have it—"

"Both. Either. You're devious that way."

Sirius snorted in amused irritation. "You know I hate that. Use your own words. Plagiarising bastard."

"Mm."

Tonks's head had been going back and forth between them, watching this verbal volley. It would have been, should have been, rather entertaining, if only her brain wouldn't insist on dwelling on how readily Remus had let Sirius touch him after flinching away from her. And Sirius was being uncannily observant, today as always. She fervently hoped he hadn't seen that little flash of completely ridiculous... jealousy.

She gave herself a short but thorough mental pummelling and tried to join in the spirit of the conversation.

"Some people might be wound up and overworked, Sirius, but you look very relaxed," she observed, eyeing the way Sirius had spread himself across half the settee.

"Might be more chipper," Sirius grumbled, "if _someone_ hadn't woken me at arse o'clock this morning."

"Mm. Same here," said Remus, eyes glinting.

"Just call me Tonks the human alarm clock," Tonks replied breezily. "Had to get up early to complete my extensive beauty routine, you know." She struck what she hoped was a sultry pose and batted her purple eyelashes. "Aside from which, couldn't be late for work. Crime never sleeps and all that."

"Beauty routine?" Sirius laughed in a rather uncomplimentary way. "Ugh. Be glad you weren't born a girl, Moony."

"Oh, I am," he replied. Tonks could feel warmth rising in her face. She bit her lips to hide a smile. That was more like it.

"Two minutes always does me," Sirius went on, ignoring the two of them as they avoided making eyes at each other. "Thirty seconds to pull on trousers and a shirt, the rest of the time to comb my hair, and I'm good to go."

Remus hummed a bit at this. "I recall overhearing some scuttlebutt at Hogwarts that you were two-minute man, but I hadn't understood it referred to hair combing. I may have done you an injustice, it seems, but I—"

"Bite me, Lupin."

"—I'd have estimated closer to twenty minutes for your grooming regimen, if you count charming the spots off your chin. And you forgot to factor in washing."

"Whiff of _eau de Sirius_ never did anyone any harm," returned Sirius.

"Granted. I can even see how some might appreciate it as an early warning device."

They both snickered at this. Sirius muttered to Remus, "Now the gloves are coming off, mate" in a distinctly warning tone and with a mischievous flash in his eye. They looked as if they could be go on like this for hours if not distracted.

Tonks cleared her throat, distractingly. "Tell you a bit about my adventurous day, shall I?"

Remus always enjoyed the tales she told him about her work. Even before they had become... whatever they were now, he'd been a good audience, drinking in the stories of her trials and tribulations with the thirst of a man stranded in the desert. She sensed that he enjoyed the manner of her telling at least as much as the subject matter, so she always made the most of each scene, dramatising it to the hilt. Then, as now, his eyes would flicker from her face to her sweeping arm and back to her face. He watched her with much the same avidity as when she stripped herself bare in his bedroom.

In Sirius, she seemed to have found an equally enraptured listener. And why not? He was, almost literally, a captive audience in this house. And this had been one of the more entertaining episodes in the short but tumultuous career of Auror N. Tonks. Certainly better than the day she'd investigated a deserted property in Devon said to be the refuge of a colony of Red Caps. They'd turned out to be hedgehogs.

During her recital, both men put in a few words here and there as an encouragement to her to keep going, but overall they seemed content simply to listen. Their faces unconsciously echoed her expressions, widening their eyes and grimacing along with her. What was it that made them so hungry for all this silliness and farcical drama? Whatever the cause, Tonks was happy to give it. She'd been a performer from the time she could walk, if not before, and they seemed to relish it all.

"—and then I said something like, 'Oh, god, what d'you see?' and then Ann—I could absolutely kill her, because she answered—she said—" At the last minute Tonks realised that she couldn't tell them about seeing Kingsley without risking it getting back to him via Sirius, so she finished, "She said the name of another Auror I know well. Merlin! I practically died right there." She clasped a hand to her bosom and Sirius grinned. "I mean, it's one thing to look at anonymous bits, as it were, but quite another to..." she trailed off and smiled brightly, as Remus nodded his agreement of her point of view.

Tonks sighed theatrically and slouched a bit on the arm of the settee to mark the end of her recitation. "And now that you've heard my story, gentlemen, tell me yours. Aside from taking the piss with each other all afternoon, what have the pair of you been up to today?"

Sirius immediately dropped an arm around Remus's neck and drew him close. Remus looked a little surprised, but amiably allowed himself to be pulled into a half-reclining headlock.

In a hoarse, urgent whisper, Sirius said, "Lord! We're in for it now, Moony. Lady wants to know what we've been _up to_. You're better at this sort of thing. Tell her something! Anything!"

"Er," said Remus, from the vicinity of Sirius's armpit.

Sirius waggled his eyebrows at Tonks as they waited for Remus to think of something—anything!—to tell her.

"Er," said Remus again in a slightly choked voice. "Playing noughts and crosses?" he offered. His fingers began gently prying Sirius's forearm loose from across his windpipe.

"Great one, mate. Well done!" Sirius nodded fervently. He seemed blithely unaware of his friend's impending asphyxiation. "And next time we play, _you_ can be the naughty one and _I'll_ be cross."

Sirius set about making ardent smooching noises in the vicinity of Remus's ear and enthusiastically squeezed tighter. Remus's face shaded from pink to purple. In spite of the sure knowledge that Sirius was having her on, Tonks felt her mouth drop open at this exhibition. Which was apparently not over.

"Er," Remus cleared his throat as he continued his polite struggle to extricate himself from Sirius's encompassing arm. "We actually were playing noughts and crosses, at one point," he said huskily, removing one hand from Sirius's arm long enough to indicate the wadded up parchments on the table. "Sirius claims to have a foolproof system, if he can just work out the kinks."

"Mm. _Kinks,_" moaned Sirius with ardent glee into Remus's newly mussed hair.

"And, er, don't mind him. Just be grateful he hasn't started on the wand jokes yet."

Apparently giving up on his previous attempts at detaching Sirius's death-grip, Remus placed a finger with scientific precision between two of Sirius's ribs and gave a deft wiggle. Sirius loosened his hold and fall back with a breathy shriek, allowing Remus to duck away from the encircling arm.

"You are _far_ too fond of tickling for a Dark creature," accused Sirius. "For shame, sir!"

Remus gave Sirius an admonishing look that was heavily laced with... amusement? Affection.

Now freed, Remus glanced apologetically at Tonks. Sweeping his hair from his eyes, he explained, "Padfoot does sometimes get a bit... excitable after he's had a glass or two." Sirius raised that empty vessel in illustration. "Not that I would want to put you off him as a drinking companion," Remus continued, massaging his throat. "Very, um... companionable."

A small sound of disbelief emerged from Sirius, now wedged into the farthest corner of the settee with his knees protectively raised. "Certainly didn't put you off, did it, my bonny boy? Can you deny that only a short while ago your mouth was crammed full of my meat?"

The silence that followed this shocking proclamation was so complete that Tonks now knew what people meant about hearing a pin drop. The tick of the wall clock made a deafening accompaniment to the heat rising in her cheeks.

Things had veered rather suddenly into the surreal.

She lifted her eyes to where Remus was sitting, quite still. His own eyes were closed, and he was massaging his eyelids with his forefingers. He seemed to be fighting some strong emotion, but it didn't appear to be mortification.

She transferred her gaze to Sirius, who was regarding her with an air of expectancy. His eyes widened as if daring her to say something. He looked entirely too innocent to be credible. Which was, of course, all to the good.

Taking heart, Tonks leaned forward and gave Sirius her best intimidate-the-suspect-with-the-threat-of-Azkaban stare. She found that she was twisting nervously at a strand of hair at her neck and put her hand down. "That was an image," she told him sternly, when at last she found her voice, "that I could have lived without."

"Honestly? You surprise me," returned Sirius coolly. And to emphasise the fact of his surprise, he raised his eyebrows at her. "Now, why ever—?"

Sirius stopped and looked across at Remus, whose eyes had opened cautiously. While his face was quite expressionless, something in Remus's posture suggested that he was holding himself back from something. Tonks wondered if he might be as tempted to hex Sirius as she was.

When Remus opened his mouth to speak, however, he addressed himself to her instead. "Er, Tonks. Would it help at all if I assured you... er, that this isn't how it looks?" asked Remus, in a oddly strangled voice.

Sirius let out an exaggerated and musical "Ooooh," and let realisation dawn on his face, the merest hint of a evil smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "My, my, my." He shook his head in apparent regret. "I see now. You've quite a dirty mind for one so young, Auror Tonks. No doubt the corrupting influence of all the malefactors with whom you spend your days, working them over with your truncheon or whatnot."

He turned to Remus, "Tell her, mate, how much you enjoyed that delicious steak I cooked for you at lunch today."

And suddenly the two of them were off into gales of uproarious laughter. Sirius thumped Remus repeatedly on the back, as Remus wiped a few tears from his eyes.

Tonks smiled and laughed with them. It was impossible not to, really. But her cheeks, she was sure, were still crimson. "Well, far be it from me to play gooseberry. I'll just... leave you two alone for a bit, shall I?" She stood, hoping the embarrassed quiver at the end of the sentence would be taken for something else. Amused condescension, perhaps.

"Oi!" Sirius smiled at her winningly. "Don't go! If you only could have seen your face, Tonks. I'll promise to behave—"

"Please, Tonks—"

Tonks held up her hands. "Not to worry. I'll be back in a few minutes, after you two have had a chance to stop channelling your inner twelve-year-olds."

Their faces dropped, and she realised that she had sounded—_was_—petulant.

First jealous, then embarrassed, and now petulant. Great.

She went on hastily, "Not that I mean to— to disapprove or anything. All in good fun, I know that. It's— well— _wonderful_ to see you both in such cheerful moods." She was twisting that strand of hair again and stopped herself with an effort. "Only I— yeah, I have a few things that want doing in the kitchen first. So, um, see you in a tick."

She backed out, her face burning with confusion. As she moved away from the door into the hall, she heard Remus quietly reproving Sirius, who interrupted him in a booming voice, saying, "Colours up nicely, though, doesn't she? And I did warn you that the gloves were off. Do you remember that time I did something similar with Lily and James? Never saw so many shades of red. The circumstances were different, of course, but improvisation's the key, I always say..."

Her progress down the hall thankfully drowned him out.

_(continued in chapter 7)_

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_**Author's note:**__ Hrmmm. So help me out here, will you? I'm aware—no one more so—of the dreadfully slow pace of this fic. Six chapters, and we haven't covered even 24 hours. I expect things will pick up in a few more chapters, but I'd love to know whether you're accepting of this meandering pace, or if you've been tapping your foot and glancing at your watch impatiently, hoping I'll Get. On. With. It. Please tell me what you think, and don't be afraid of hurting my feelings, because there is no criticism you can make of my writing that I haven't already __levelled at myself. Um. That _isn't _meant to be a challenge to your creativity, however. :)_


	7. Chapter 7

_**Author's note:**_ _This chapter got so gawd-awful long, again, that I decided to post it in two parts. One now, and the next in a few days, instead of my customary three weeks LOL. There was going to be smut in it, for better or for worse, but it's delayed until the next chapter._

_**Thanks**__ to __**Arya**__, anonymous reviewer, to whom I couldn't reply privately, for your kind comments :) ; to the talented writers __**Malianani**__,_ _**Velvet Storm**__, and __**remuslives23**_ _for offering advice and warm fuzzies; and to everyone who reviewed, without whom I would have given this up after the first few chapters: __**ishandtwofourths**__, __**Aeshan**__, __**pygmygirl**__, __**sophie-hatter**__, __**RemusJ**__, __**LadyLish**__, __**Esme's Favorite Daughter**__, __**Sesshiesgrl**__, __**cackles-the-witch**__, __**ITellLies**__, and __**Slytherin360**__._

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**Had We Never Loved So Blindly**  
by MahsaFF

**Chapter 7**

To say that Tonks stalked down the hall in high dudgeon would have been an overstatement, but not by much.

What she was feeling was a ridiculous overreaction to a trivial incident, and of course she realised it. True, Sirius and Remus had been having her on, teasing her, baiting her, attempting quite successfully to put her out of countenance. But it had been all in good fun, as she'd assured both them and herself. That much, her intellect insisted on. So she accepted it.

Grudgingly.

Her heart, however, reported quite a different story, in which a man she cared for—loved, if you cared to put it that way, and she did—chose to keep her both literally and figuratively at arm's reach while flaunting a close and affectionate relationship with his best mate. Flaunting it in her face. Not that she believed for a minute that anything like _that_ was going on between them, but still, it was obvious that he had no commitment problems in his friendship with Sirius.

Put it another way: Here she'd been, tiptoeing around—for months!—never pushing him further than he was ready to go, taking care to respect his boundaries, and admittedly hoping for some return on her investment. Some reward. Possibly a bit of trust. A little more openness. _Not much to ask for, is it?_ her heart whinged to her brain. And meanwhile there Sirius was, blundering in, behaving towards Remus however he chose, taking the piss, walking roughshod over his privacy. And to what result? Warm, unguarded smiles that Tonks would have killed to have for herself.

All bestowed on a Sirius, who had done nothing at all to deserve them. _That you know of,_ replied her brain.

With an irritated grimace, Tonks ordered her mind and her heart to shut up and sort things out behind the scenes for a bit. There was, after all, actual work that needed doing for the Order.

She pushed open the kitchen door to find Molly at the centre of a controlled whirlwind of supper-related preparations. A quick survey at the ingredients being pummelled into submission led Tonks to conclude that tonight's meal would feature quiche and salad. Her mouth watered. It had been a long time since her carrot lunch.

Molly, her robe sleeves rolled to the elbow, glanced Tonks's way long enough to offer a quick smile of greeting and then went back to competently flicking her wand this way and that. She moved like the conductor of a well-trained orchestra or a general with her army. Everything around her hopped to it under her brisk direction: Two pie crusts submitted to their rolling pins on the scrubbed tabletop, a block of cheese parted into cubes beneath its chopper, salad greens shivered under the cold tap, and a whisk agitated the contents of a blue enamelled bowl.

The ingredients had apparently concluded that it would be easier to give way to authority than to rebel, and Tonks wondered whether Molly had been born with the natural abilities of a despot or if it was the result of mothering seven children. Not wanting to cause any disturbance to this admirable but rather alarming efficiency—which was, sadly, all too likely with her—Tonks edged her way along the wall to the far corner of the kitchen.

Here was the area set up by Mad-Eye to coordinate the often chaotic activities of the Order, christened by him their Command Centre. Not that this name was used by anyone but himself; to the rest of them it was simply the "drop-off".

A cork board had been attached with more enthusiasm than skill to the wall above a cheap card table. The board held the week's assignment roster as well as a curling schedule for guard duty at the Ministry, which no one had bothered to remove after Arthur's attack. There were also scribbled messages for various Order members, some folded with a name written on the front, others open for the world to see, such as the one in Hestia's round penmanship that complained, "Wash up your own tea things, none of us is your scullery maid. This means YOU, S. B.!!" Another note had Bill's name printed painstakingly at the top followed by several lines of Remus's crabbed, all-but-indecipherable manuscript.

Tonks automatically scanned the messages but found nothing meant for her. She turned her attention to the table, on which various items had been deposited to pass along to others in a sort of round robin exchange. A Foe-Glass that Moody had thoughtfully labelled to Dumbledore was still there, collecting dust. One of Emmeline's scarves had a note pinned to it saying, "Found after last meeting. E?" in Molly's handwriting. A lumpy package wobbled furtively as she looked at it; on the brown wrappings Dung had scrawled, "for H don't nobody touch." Tonks glanced over the rest of the objects on display, but didn't locate the unexciting stack of papers she was meant to pick up.

She turned to Molly and waited, in vain, for some discernible break in the flurry of activity going on around them.

"Um, Molly?" she said hesitantly.

With a reaction time that would have done credit to a duellist, Molly paused her symphony in a comprehensive sweep of her wand and turned an enquiring face to Tonks.

"Yes, dear?" she asked, wiping a streak of flour from one flushed cheek. "I didn't mean to ignore you, but I did want to get things in train before Arthur, Bill, and Alastor arrive. Bill hasn't been eating properly, you must have noticed how thin he's getting, and what with one thing and another I expect he doesn't—"

"I'm sure Bill will be ever so glad to have another home-cooked meal, Molly," Tonks said hastily. Bill had been generously stuffed with spaghetti just yesterday, after all, in this very kitchen. It was a wonder he could still fit through a door. "And I'm sorry to interrupt your preparations," she went on, with an fleeting glance at the floury rolling pins, hovering knife, and dripping greens. They seemed to quiver slightly with impatience. "Um. Did Arthur happen to mention anything about the incident reports he wants me and Kingsley to look over tonight?"

"Oh, goodness yes. I'm sorry. He gave them to me at lunch at the Burrow, and I have them just here." She bent down to a canvas shopping bag near her feet and pulled out a sheaf of spinach ("Fresh-picked from my garden"), a half-knitted sweater hanging by its needles, and finally a large, string-tied bundle of parchments.

There were far more than Tonks had been expecting, and the half formed plans she'd made for enjoying the upcoming weekend fled under this weighty load of bureaucracy.

Misinterpreting her dubious look, Molly said defensively, "Arthur has very good instincts for this sort of thing, for sensing when something isn't right. People don't always realise that. I know he's not the most dynamic of men, doesn't always present himself as well as he could, but—"

Tonks opened her mouth to protest but Molly was on a roll, "For weeks now he's been telling me, telling Alastor as well, that the general trend of reports coming through his department show something worrisome. _Very_ worrisome. He hasn't been able to put his finger on it just yet—so kind of you and Kingsley to offer to help—but his intuition is as sound as a bell."

"I'm sure it is, Molly," Tonks put in as soon as she could. Even to her own ears she sounded more reassuring than convinced. She tried again. "Arthur has a loads of experience in his office—senior man, isn't he?—and we all listen to him and respect that. That's why Kingsley and I are so grateful he was able to smuggle these files out to us for the weekend."

This wasn't strictly true, but she hoped it would do to satisfy Molly.

In fact, she and Kingsley had been planning to go over the last three months of Auror incident reports, in the probably vain hope of finding something that indicated where the Azkaban escapees might be hiding out. They were quite reduced to scraping the bottom of the barrel after all these months. Arthur, overhearing, had volunteered, quite insistently, to provide them with his own annotated copies of reports from Misuse of Muggle Artifacts. Kingsley, with his usual instinct for keeping everyone happy—the man was a politician to the bone—had been too polite to refuse. And far from being smuggled out, which had been Arthur's word for it, Tonks seriously doubted if the reports were under any kind of confidentiality seal at all.

Tonks's words seemed to have reassured Molly that she understood the importance of her undertaking, however, and Molly handed the bundle to Tonks, who hefted them into her arms.

Molly examined Tonks's face with motherly concern. "And are you feeling quite well, dear? You're flushed."

"Oh. Well, anyone would be after— after running the gauntlet of those two merry pranksters in the library." She rolled her eyes and did her best to suppress a scowl. "Someone got a bit reckless with the Cheering charms in there or something."

"My, are they _still_ at it, then?" Molly nodded and patted her shoulder understandingly. "They've been carrying on in there for hours. Sirius did warn me, but of course I already knew what to expect after Halloween."

"Oh? Uh. Right." Tonks was mystified, but did her best to sound casual rather than completely in the dark. But Molly was giving her a sharp look, probably the same one that kept the twins from putting more past her than they did.

"Don't you—? Only I... I thought Remus might have mentioned it to you?" Molly fished delicately.

It had happened more than once over the past few months, someone assuming that she knew more about Remus than she did. And of course she ought to know more, so she didn't really like to disabuse people of the notion.

Tonks tried to decide how to elicit details without admitting too much ignorance. "Oh, he... might have mentioned something, but if so I've forgotten. What did Sirius warn you about?"

"Just that the meat—the steaks he made today, you know—that it might make Remus a bit... well, the phrase he used was 'giddy as a girl'. But the same thing happened back at Halloween, so I remembered— Except _then_ Sirius pinched an entire roast I'd been planning for supper later in the week." Molly glared in the direction of the meat keeper, as if it had somehow been complicit in this theft. "The two of them finished off most of it that afternoon. When I came in—" Molly laughed indulgently. "Such carrying on, right here in my kitchen." Apparently Molly had annexed the Grimmauld Place kitchen as her own. "Like a pair schoolboys. And the mess in here, just like today's! Next morning I gave him a piece of my mind—Sirius, that is, of course I don't blame Remus in the least—for taking my roast without permission, but when Sirius explained..." Molly trailed off, looking uncomfortable.

'What did he say?"

"Well. Halloween night has been a— a particularly sad time for them, for Remus and Sirius, dear, as I'm sure you're aware. Not at all the occasion for celebration it's been for most of us these past fourteen years. And as this year it fell just at Remus's... special time, you know... Sirius explained that on the spur of the moment, as it were, he decided that Remus could benefit from... that the meat would in some way help with... Well, dear, I really don't know the details of it and... To tell you the truth, I didn't like to ask."

Two spots of red appeared on Molly's cheeks as Tonks tried to take in what Molly was suggesting, unsure of exactly how to interpret this aspect of Sirius and Remus's friendship. Or this insight into... what? Werewolf physiology? It was something to file away for later thought.

"So," Molly went on. "Today when I— when I heard them, I didn't like to disturb—though it is my day for dusting the library—not when Remus sounded so jolly, because Merlin knows he deserves any happiness he can find, and sometimes the pair of them remind me that much of Fred and George, you know, the way they set each other off, and if it isn't one thing it's another—with Fred and George, that is—although what a thoughtful, polite man like him—Remus, I mean—sees in someone as— well, in Sirius, I'm sure I don't know, because there's a man who wants watching if ever I saw one."

Molly paused for breath and indicated the chairs at the table. "But sit down, please, Tonks." She summoned the teapot, saying, "This pot isn't too old if you fancy a drop before you go."

Tonks hesitated, but when a plate of iced lemon biscuits followed the teapot onto the table, she decided to take a seat. "Well, just for few minutes. Kingsley's expecting me soon. Ta, Molly," she added taking the proffered cup.

Once paused from her labours, Molly seemed in no hurry to resume. Slipping off her shoes, she leaned back in her chair beside the pie crusts and wiggled her toes luxuriantly. "Tell me about your day, dear. Were you able to get outside at all? Such lovely spring weather."

"Matter of fact," Tonks answered, sipping her tea, "I _was_ outside today. All day. Got a bit of a bone to pick with Arthur about that as it happens."

"With Arthur? How—"

"Yeah, because of one of his reports," Tonks affirmed. "That is, my friend Ann said 'Wesley,' but it must have been his all right because it was from Misuse of Muggle artifacts. Got me sent out on the most idiotic assignment of my illustrious career. Stakeout at a public urinal." Tonks grinned as Molly's eyes widened. "Ann and me, we reckon we'll never see as many willies in the rest of our lives put together as we saw today."

"Wi— Well! I'm sure Arthur would _never_—"

"Yeah, and the shock, I'm telling you, Molly, the _shock_ of seeing how men behave as if— well, let's just say that if it had been target practise, most of them wouldn't have been able to hit the side of a barn with a _Confundus_. You wouldn't believe—"

"You're forgetting I've raised six boys. Seven, if you count Arthur." Molly smiled briefly at her own witticism. "But I'm _sure_ that if Arthur had had any say in the matter..." Molly trailed off, looking faintly appalled. Tonks hastened to set her mind at rest.

"Nah, it wasn't in any way Arthur's fault," Tonks reassured her, biting into a biscuit. "My own, more 'n likely, 'cos I ended up coming in late to our staff meeting this morning, and old Scrimmie decided I was taking the piss, so he gave me some back—literally!" She giggled through the biscuit crumbs, and Molly's frown wavered a moment before her disapproval reasserted itself.

"Still. Scrimgeour, you say? _Rufus_ Scrimgeour? I find it difficult to believe—shocking even—that a man like that of all people—" Molly stammered, disconcerted. "He has ambitions to be Minister of Magic someday, you must have heard the rumours. Why he would ever assign two girls—young ladies—well, I know you're grown women, but—on an assignment in which men's private parts—"

"Don't give it another thought, Molly," Tonks soothed her. "No permanent harm done to our tender sensibilities. I'll probably look back on it in my declining years for a bit of a laugh, so it wasn't a dead loss. And it's not as if we'd never seen—"

She stopped, a hair's breadth away from putting her foot firmly in her mouth. That was the sort of joke one might make to a mate like Ann, but definitely not to the matriarch of the Weasley clan who, as rumor—well, Charlie—had it, was easily provoked into rants about Scarlet Women. She closed her lips and attempted to look as if she'd never started that last sentence.

"Oh, no. Well. Of course, dear," Molly said gamely, looking everywhere but at Tonks. Her face had gone quite pink. She began fussing with the teapot, peering in and stirring the stewed contents, while Tonks rearranged the remaining biscuits symmetrically on the plate and cast around desperately for a topic of conversation that didn't feature men's bits. She had just resolved to ask Molly for her lemon biscuit recipe, when Molly said briskly—

"Well, I mustn't keep you all day, dear. Kingsley will be impatient for Arthur's reports. And of course you'll be wanting to stop in on Remus before you go—" Molly stopped, seeming to realise the train of thought that had brought her to this remark. "Oh! That is— Not that I meant to imply—"

And turned, bless her, even brighter pink than before. Unable to help herself, Tonks buried her head in her arms and gave way to mirth, snorting in such an unladylike way that she was sure Molly must think her entirely mad. With an effort of will, she regained her composure and peeped up at a distressed Molly, who had risen from her chair and looked as if she might like to sink through the floor.

As Molly seemed to be working up the effort to apologise again, Tonks forestalled her by saying heartily, "Thanks for that, Molly. I needed a good laugh just now." She pushed her own chair back and stood to wrap Molly in a hug. "And you're right, I do need to run. I'm just going upstairs for a moment, and then I'll, er, stop in to say my goodbyes to Remus," _and his bits,_ "on my way out."

At least she wasn't the only one in the house today who'd had a moment of wishing that the world would go away, or at least have the decency to swallow her up. She grabbed the last remaining biscuits from the plate, slipped them into her pocket, and winked, leaving a flustered Molly to resume conducting the supper preparations with her usual martial precision.

Taking the stairs two at a time and ignoring a creaky protest from the heel of her boot, Tonks ascended the four flights that ended in a cramped landing at the top of the house. To the left was the attic door; to the right, three other doors led to small dormer rooms that had probably been occupied by lowly retainers in the house's glory days. She pushed open the door at the southwest corner and entered a room lit brightly by the sinking sun.

Tonks had never been in Remus's room before without Remus. And when there, being generally otherwise occupied, she rarely had time to notice a lot about the place beyond the obvious: poky and rather bare. She'd originally intended simply to pop in and locate the trainers she'd left here last week and rid herself of her wobbly boots. But as Remus was off trading schoolboy insults with Sirius, she had a few minutes to indulge in her snoopiness—that is, in her natural curiosity. Or even better, in an Auror's instinct to sleuth.

Looking around, she saw that she hadn't missed much. To call it spartan would have been a compliment. Her own flat was spartan, with its utilitarian sofa and one chair, narrow bed, seven pieces of cutlery, two plates, and a mug. But it held her life: her old Auror course books, some training weights, the fuzzy orange pillow she'd made when she was nine, pictures of her family, a drawing from her niece tacked to the wall by her door.

This room was simply... haphazard, as if the items scattered here and there had no purpose, knew no owner. A dozen people might have lived in this room, each leaving behind some uncherished item. But taken as a collection, the items didn't add up to any personality at all: an unmade bed, a dusty water glass collecting cobwebs on the window sill, a comb missing several teeth on the floor in a corner, a yellowed Daily Prophet half-visible under the wardrobe.

A furtive glance through the drawers of the bedside table showed that Remus's possessions were not grouped by function, at least not by any sane definition of such. Inky quills shared space with a worn toothbrush, a large ring of keys, and a drawstring bag. A second drawer held an old black t-shirt—or rag?, a chunk of bath soap, a smoothed and carefully folded paper sack from Honeydukes, and a peeling leather journal that she did not open, her nosiness having some bounds. Remus seemed to have disorganisation down to a minimalist art form. A place for nothing and nothing in its place.

Recalling herself to her original mission, she opened the wardrobe door as a likely starting place for her search. There might even be time to drop the boots at the cobbler's before she met Kingsley.

The wardrobe held less than a dozen hangers, upon which were a motley collection of robes, trousers, jumpers, and shirts, all in more or less threadbare condition. A few had been quite skillfully mended or patched. Tonks thought this must be Molly's work or—worrisome thought—some unknown woman in Remus's life, because it certainly hadn't been Remus himself: She'd once seen him repair a rent in the elbow of his jumper with a Sticking charm that even _she_ had known wouldn't last five minutes.

A number of far more costly robes were heaped carelessly on the floor of the wardrobe. Tonks recognised them as the armload of cast-offs that Sirius had collected from the attic one night. Tonks had enlisted his aid in cajoling Remus to attend her Ministry dinner party, and Sirius had tossed this bundle of luxury materials onto the bed where they'd lain untouched as Remus steadfastly refused even to look at them. In the end, Sirius had walked out muttering that Remus could keep the damned things or burn 'em, but he wasn't taking them back.

Tonks knelt down and ran an admiring finger over a carved ivory clasp. Victorian, she guessed. All of the robes were richly made in velvets and silks of muted colours. Someone in the Black family—or had it been a house elf?—had had very good taste. There were beautiful fastenings and linings, and subtle hues were set off with glimmers of intricate embroidery. In short, nothing that Remus would ever be caught dead in.

She spied a bit of orange clashing with the scarlet silk lining of one of the cloaks and triumphantly plucked out one of her trainers. A fat brown spider, startled by the movement, scuttled across the silk. With a shudder, Tonks drew her wand and sent the spider sailing through the open window into the square below. With the tip of her wand, she searched the rest of the pile with a few cautious stirs until she located the trainer's mate.

She sat in the old armchair to change her shoes, its worn velvet seat wheezing and settling beneath her. She took her time pulling off her boots. She wasn't in any hurry to go back downstairs. Not yet. Not when her heart and brain were still grumbling at each other about Remus and Sirius. She didn't know where she stood with Remus. Never had, really. But somehow it had been easier to deal with before she'd seen the two of them together being... old friends. Merlin. She was being so uncharitable. She knew that. What was wrong with Remus, or anyone, having old friends? She had them herself.

The sinking sun splayed its golden rays across Tonks's chair, turning it into a burnished throne. The old orange trainer in her hand glowed like the magic boot in that old Beedle story. And thinking of one tale reminded her of another, the one where the old crone warned the young maid about Men, who wanted only One Thing.

Was that true of Remus?

She'd missed out on that warning, somehow, with Mum. _Very remiss of her,_ she grinned to herself. But somehow, despite the somewhat circumscribed nature of her relationship with Remus, she felt that he really did care. He wanted more than the One Thing, didn't he? There were so many small signs that spoke of his unexpressed need for her, not a sexual one, but something else: a sort of yearning towards her that she ached to fulfil for him.

She was special to him. She did know that. Hadn't he made an admission to her—under a bit of duress, admittedly—in this very chair exactly two weeks ago today? And she'd made an admission to herself then as well. A smile traced her lips as she recalled the circumstances. Sex had always been amazing, really, between the two of them, but that time had been memorable for entirely new reasons.

_(continued in Chapter 8)_

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**Author's note:** Well... uh... rather a strange place to leave off, I know, but the flashback is very long and quite smutty. So... it's coming up next time. Unless you're tired of that sort of thing? Because if you are, be honest and let me know. I could probably find a more genteel way to present it. Tell me what you think — I love reviews. :)_


	8. Chapter 8

_**Auhor's note and warning:**__ Hey, back again, finally, with smut as promised. I hope you enjoy this chapter, even if it isn't quite teh secks, because it was an agonising nightmare to produce. LOL I won't go on and on about how hesitant I am even to post it, but... you can take that part as read. :)_

_**Thanks**__ to those who held my hand and listened to me whinge about writing this (you know who you are, and your numbers are legion) as well as to all who took the time to review the last chapter: __**ishandtwofourths**__, __**slytherin360**__, __**Esme's Favorite Daughter**__, __**sophie-hatter**__, __**remuslives23**__, __**Velvet Storm**__,_ _**Aeshan**__, __**cackles the witch**__, __**Av3322**__, __**DragonDi**__, __**LadyLish**__, __**RemusJ**__, __**MidnightAngel325**__, and __**SomethingBorrowed**__, _

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**Had We Never Loved So Blindly**  
by MahsaFF

_He who binds himself a Joy  
_ _Doth the wingèd life destroy;_  
_But he who kisses the Joy as it flies_  
_Lives in Eternity's sunrise._

- William Blake, Eternities

_Art can never exist without Naked Beauty displayed._

- William Blake, The Laocoön

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_Two weeks ago_

Tonks found Remus tucked away in the library, hunched over the latest report from Dedalus. He was frowning mightily as his fingers unconsciously plucked at his hair.

"Wotcher," she said. "Like some help?"

Taking his lovely smile for an answer, she budged in next to him on the settee and peered at the rather crumpled parchment in his hand, knocking her shoulder against his companionably.

They had the house to themselves for once—not counting Sirius, of course, who was off moping Merlin-knew-where. And there could certainly be no better way to spend an afternoon, she thought as she tucked her feet under her, than alone in Remus's company, even if it meant summarising field reports for the next meeting. At least they made a good team: Remus was the acknowledged authority on abysmal penmanship, after all, and she had enough imagination to fill in the gaping holes in any narrative, even Ded's.

"So..." she said, after they'd been puzzling over said narrative for several minutes. She began jotting notes on a separate parchment. "He's followed up with Pritchard about those mysterious lights north of Oxford. No joy there, just Muggle kids on motorbikes. But... we need to be on the lookout for trolls in—"

"_Tolls,_ it says here," Remus interjected.

"Don't be thick," she replied shortly, still writing. "It's trolls. No one warns about tolls."

"They might do, if they didn't have the correct change."

She sighed, closing her eyes briefly and fighting back a grin. Sometimes Remus had a queer sense of humour. She gave him her best quelling look, the one that worked well on her three-year-old nephew. "Right then. We need to watch out for trolls _or tolls_ in Aberdeen—"

"Abingdon," Remus corrected, unquelled.

"Abing— Oh, for the love of— It says 'Aberdeen' right here!" Her finger jabbed the ink-blotted parchment.

"Now you're being thick. It's 'Abingdon' plain as plain, and it is right next to Oxford." His finger brushed hers, sending a little frisson up her arm. Damn him.

Tonks gave him a sidelong glance, but he was quite innocently examining the parchment.

This rather pleasurable bickering continued for some time, although it must be admitted that they made very little actual headway—on the report, at least. She was in mid-grumble about something or other when Remus reached out absently to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear, and before she knew quite what she was doing, before she was even aware that she had a plan in mind, she was yanking him from his seat, away from that idiotic report, and making for the stairs.

He seemed a little bemused at first; they'd never made love during the day, it not being circumspect enough for Remus's tastes, but it was obvious where she was heading. Still, he followed willingly enough, and by the time they reached the top landing he appeared to have caught her enthusiasm in a most satisfactory way. Perhaps for him, as for her, there was something more than a little exciting, almost illicit, in the idea of this day-lit tryst.

Remus opened the door to his room and stood back to let her pass inside. As she did so, Tonks was suddenly, appallingly, seized by an almost crippling insecurity. It was a sort of _squeezing_ feeling that sometimes overtook her at odd moments, and this time it threw her headlong into a labyrinth of second thoughts; she questioned the wisdom of her impulsive first move and worried what the second one should be. Did he really want this? It was broad daylight, after all. Anyone might arrive and want to speak to one of them—the house was often busier than King's Cross on school leaving day. Should she ask him? Was he going along just to please her? Because if so she'd hate that, but... how could one tell?

It was horrid, this all too frequent experience of being buffeted by uncertainty when she least expected it. She felt at times like an overgrown puppy, all hands and feet and bumbling eagerness when she wanted to appear—to be—confident and sexy, especially for him. She was making a juvenile exhibition of herself and, of course, that had to be quashed immediately.

Tonks relaxed her shoulders, took a surreptitious steadying breath and, striving for an impression of relaxed maturity, forced herself to meet Remus's eye.

He was standing a short distance away, hands in his trouser pockets, regarding her with a steady expression that held an undercurrent of amused understanding. It was a look she'd seen reflected in his eyes before when she was being particularly... inept. He was amused, yes, and not bothering to hide it, but the gaze was also far from unkind; indeed, she took comfort in the fact that he seemed, in some strange way, to relish her gawkiness.

Taking his hands from his pockets, Remus moved forward and put a finger under her chin, lifting her face to his. Just before he kissed her, he murmured with that unerring instinct he had for indirect reassurance, "I think... I'm going to enjoy this."

He drew her close, and his kiss was tender and full of promise as he slid his fingers up her spine to cup the back of her neck. It was lovely, this soothing sense of being cradled in the palm of someone's hand, and she thought again how much she loved that Remus wasn't put off by her awkwardness and inexperience, in the bedroom or anywhere else, how he gave every indication, just as he'd said, of enjoying it.

As he was certainly enjoying it at the moment.

His mouth moved over hers with warmth and firmness, teasing her with his tongue and gently biting at her lips until she felt herself sinking into him. Without breaking their kiss, Remus flicked his wand to cast a Silencing Charm and then wrapped his arm back around her waist to pull her more tightly against him. She could feel his arousal as his hands skimmed up over the curve of her bottom, her hips, her back. They left a trail of tingling heat in their wake before coming to rest tangled in her hair.

His lips and tongue slowly took over her universe, sparking off one delightful sensation after another. To a counterpoint of soft groans, kisses, and whispered names, they pulled off shirts, unfastened belts, caressed through fabric and under it. Finally they were down to essentials: two bodies and bare skin, wrapped in each other, striving to maximise every point of contact, arching into the deeply pleasing friction offered by legs and hips.

Tonks began to feel lightheaded from this dizzying overload on her senses, shivering under his touch, drinking in his warm scent, and tasting the salt of his skin under her tongue. When plaster rubbed at her shoulder blades, she became aware that at some point Remus had backed her against a wall. How it had happened she wasn't quite sure, but she supported the relocation wholeheartedly, being more than a little uncoordinated in the state she was in.

She twined her arms around his neck more securely and whispered, "Keep me steady."

She could feel him smile into her hair as he replied, "Always, love."

He didn't mean either of those words literally, she knew that, but it made her heart beat faster to hear them just the same. She murmured his name back into his ear, just to feel it pass her lips, and then she could only moan her approval as the hard planes of his body pressed against her, skin touching skin in a long hot line. The enticing movement of his hips gradually robbed her of the ability to stand unaided, and every nerve of her body began to thrum with desire.

And it was at this moment exactly that the sun broke from behind a cloud. Its light streamed into the room through the tall dormer window, painting oblongs of brightness upon their bit of wall. As her hand came up to shade her eyes, Remus stepped back, intending to draw the drapes, perhaps, or lead her to bed. She didn't know.

But instead he stopped, looked at her, his eyes bright and intent. And quite abruptly, Tonks felt something... shift. Not in a physical sense, because for a wonder it wasn't her equilibrium betraying her this time; it was as if the balance of that was happening between them had tilted on some invisible axis, its fulcrum nudged by this sudden radiance.

A wondering half-smile flitted across Remus's face as he took in her now-luminous expanse, his smile growing to one of quite uncomplicated delight. His gaze made its way upwards until he was looking into her eyes with a mischievous glint that invited her to share in the strangeness of this sun-bright moment.

When she peeled herself away from the plaster to close the gap between them, his reaction was immediate and unexpected. Gently, he pushed her back into position and murmured a hoarse, "Stay," and then, "Please." He held her there, pinned at his arm's length, framed within the yellow squares of sunlight as his eyes ranged again over her body.

Tonks felt... on display, a painting mounted and affixed to the wall. Was that what he was seeing now? A still life? A landscape? A trembling Venus rising from the foam?

Whatever he was envisioning, whatever he was thinking, there was no doubt whatsoever that the play of light across her skin had him entirely captivated, because he stood before her quite as much on display as she was—as men must always be, the proof of their interest being so very evident. She'd heard it said that men were visual creatures when it came to sex, and now Remus was offering the tangible proof of it. He was utterly focused on her, and it was both arousing and disquieting to be the target of this rapt concentration, quite unlike anything she had ever experienced.

Exposed to him in this solar spotlight and keenly aware of each physical imperfection it revealed, she felt surprisingly shy. But Remus had become an intrepid explorer, intent on discovering the uncharted corners of her sunlit landscape, and he wasn't to be off with a bashful twist of her hips or a covering hand. With an absent "Shh," as one might calm a child, he patted her palms to the wall so she could no longer hide behind them and then ran wide-spread fingers up her body as if smoothing out a map. She watched him study the plan of her, plotting a route that would leave no landmark unvisited.

He drew close, and she felt his sweet breath and the need in his body, his heavy erection lying hot against her belly. Her head tilted back against the wall and her eyes fluttered as he touched her again, as she gave herself up to him. Long fingers traced the fine down along the slope of her thighs, each hair lit by the sun like an infinitesimal flare; lips blazed a trail across the ridge of her collarbone, into the hollow at the base of her throat, and then up the sharp-peaked promontories of her breasts; tongue descended into the valley between them, following a rivulet of sweat on its trickling course.

Remus continued his reconnaissance with agonising deliberation. She heard her own hitching breath, and her pulse thudded in her ears like a drumbeat in a tropical jungle. It was hot. So hot. The sun was heating her, and he was heating her with mouth and hands, and if something wasn't done soon she was going to melt down, dissolve into the wall or into him. She wondered if he'd make her beg, even though it was still weeks until the full moon, because at this point she was more than ready to do it: To cajole, to beseech him. If she could only muster the strength of will, she'd pull him onto the bed right now, draw him on top of her, wrap her legs around him. Plead with him to pound her into the mattress.

But Remus had other ideas, it seemed. He had her trapped between the wall and his own solid heat, covering her, eclipsing the sun. They were kissing again, touching, licking, biting, grinding into each other, spiralling inward tighter and tighter, wound round each other so thoroughly they might never come apart. He was so intense, so consumed with what they were doing, with what he was doing to her, that she thought the house could fall down around them and he wouldn't notice. Wouldn't stop.

Her breath was coming in quick pants. She'd lost all track of the seconds or minutes or hours—they'd been left behind somewhere, dropped like the garments that littered the floor—and then he was lifting her from the wall and backing her towards the armchair. He turned away for a moment and shifted the chair with an impatient jerk a few feet to the right, rucking up the carpet as he pivoted it towards the sunlight. She admired the flex of muscles in his arms and back and his decidedly male profile outlined against the window.

Remus lowered her onto the badly sprung seat, and then he... paused. He glanced unhurriedly towards the window and back again at her, seeming to consider what he might want to do next while Tonks raked her eyes over him hungrily and—it must be confessed—impatiently: What on earth had he to think about at a time like this? It wasn't a time for thinking, it was a time for—

_Oh._

Remus had apparently followed both her thoughts and her gaze, because he reached down and grasped his cock, raising a sly eyebrow at her as if to ask, _Is this what you want?_ He ran one hand very deliberately along its length, grinning at her sharply indrawn breath which plainly replied, _Yes, it certainly is_.

It came to her, through a haze of desire, that in this room their roles were in some way reversed: It was he who was the playful one, the transparent one who hid nothing of himself, who nudged her away from her comfort zone. It was he who gave more than he took. Why had this never occurred to her before? She had always thought of herself as the one pushing at the boundaries of their relationship, and as the one who was open and giving.

And then Remus was bending over her, lifting each of her legs carefully over an arm of the chair, posing her, so that her glistening sex was revealed to the bright room. To him. She would have been embarrassed by the wantonness of the position if she hadn't already been too far gone in erotic anticipation to leave room for self-consciousness.

He stepped back, out of the way of a shaft of sunlight, and it cut through the dust motes like an arrow, striking her between the legs. She realised that this was the effect that Remus had had in mind all along, why he'd placed the chair as he had. He was staring down at her cunt looking rather flatteringly gobsmacked, and with the small part of her brain that was still working she imagined him stroking himself as he watched the sunbeam thrust into her, pierce her, impale her, as she was fucked by light, fucked by the sun, fucked by the phallus of Apollo himself.

Tonks didn't know what it said about him that he'd done this, that he enjoyed seeing her in this vulnerable position. Or what it said about her that she submitted to his... fancies. But she did submit, more than willingly. Mutely, she reached out to her lover with both hands, and Remus was there, grasping them securely, sinking to his knees in front of her, banishing the interloper and taking his rightful place between her legs.

Leaning in, he took her face in both hands and kissed her thoroughly, as though he meant it with his whole being. It was one kiss among hundreds they had shared, but somehow it brought home to her, as never before, his abiding tenderness and generosity towards her. And with that realisation came another: That in the months they'd been together, although she'd grown to care for him very deeply, she'd always held something of herself back, waiting. Waiting for Remus to open up to her, to reveal whatever it was he'd obscured behind his many layers. To show his true feelings.

But now...

_Now_ something fundamental was changing, in herself if not in him. The thought brought with it a surge of emotion so strong that she trembled, and as she did so, Remus pulled away just far enough to whisper, "All right?" She looked into his kind eyes and nodded. Smiled, if somewhat tremulously. With a quick peck on her nose and then her chin, his lips brushed a light path down her body until he reached her widespread legs.

At first Remus wanted only to tease, and the time had long since passed when that might have come as a surprise to her. Still kneeling before her exposed sex, he grazed his teeth along her inner thighs, blew on her moist, heated flesh, circled his tongue around her clit until her breathing, when she remembered to breath at all, grew ragged. Catching his hair in an urgent grip, she felt herself tense as he buried his face between her legs with a low groan. His tongue delved into her slick cleft, lapping and sucking at her clit until she was arching against his mouth while brilliant sparks crackled across her body.

When a tremor ran through her and her thighs began to tighten, he backed off, went back to teasing her, drawing out her pleasure—if such exquisite torture could be called pleasure—before returning with more perfect swipes of his tongue across her clit. He continued his attentions until she was far past speech, almost past thought. Tonks could hear her breath coming in little whimpers that might have made her self-conscious in other circumstances; shocks of sensation radiated outward from her centre until she thought she might scream. But then his tongue moved away once more, and this time Remus kissed his wet mouth up her stomach, ribs, breasts, moving higher despite her rather incoherent noises of protest.

By the time Remus reached her neck, nibbling along the rigid cord that stretched below her ear, Tonks was practically crying with frustrated desire. She grabbed his shoulders, pushing downward in silent appeal for more of his tongue or his cock or his _something_. But he took her hands and gently moved them down her own body, brushing them past her taut nipples to end between her legs, leaving her fingers an inch from where she wanted him to be.

He edged away, ever so slightly, so that he wasn't touching her at all, though the heat of his body still warmed her. She looked at him first in confusion and then in comprehension, because he wanted—

He wanted...

Did he truly want to see her—?

His breath was tickling her ear so that she felt more than heard Remus breathe, "Touch yourself, Dora."

He did.

Oh, _Merlin,_ if she hadn't been in so far, hadn't been so lost in her own arousal, she couldn't have... wouldn't have been able to. At least... yes, she'd done this to herself before during sex... sometimes, to— just to help things along, but never in such an unabashed way. Never as a-a performance for her lover as much as a benefit to herself.

Closing her eyes and taking a shaky breath, Tonks ran her fingers along her sex, slipping and circling around her sensitive bud, knowing his eyes were on her. She was so wet. He'd left her so close; had done it, she saw now, purposely. Always one step ahead of her, somehow. She bit her lip, working her hand faster while from some unfathomable distance Remus's voice filtered into her ear, low and rough, seeming almost to graze the place where his tongue had been moments before.

There in the broad daylight she pleasured herself for him, bringing herself off to the accompaniment of his throaty encouragements, to promises of what he'd to do to her, places he'd touch her with lips, teeth, tongue, fingers, hand, cock, and _ohfuck_hiswand. The words were suggestive and tantalising and wicked, conjuring erotic images that burst through in her mind until she tightened and cried out, shattering quickly, so quickly, beneath her own fingers.

As she shook from the overwhelming magnitude of this physical and emotional surrender, Remus folded her in his arms, enclosed her, stroked the damp hair at her temples. He murmured over and again that she was beautiful, oh god so beautiful, she was beautiful when she came.

As her heartbeat and breathing slowed, Tonks found herself caught up again in a bewildering cascade of feelings. They came tumbling over her as if a dam had broken somewhere, but under this onslaught, one thing stood out as clear and bright to her as sunlight: that this man holding her, this man who made love to her, _he_ was the one behind those layers that she had distrusted so much. At this time, in this room, Remus knew how to be as open as the air; here, he was willing to reveal himself to her with as much clarity as ever she could desire.

She sensed him shift up onto the chair and between her legs, and then strong hands were lifting her hips. She slid her fingers along his shoulders, felt the muscles there tensing as his hard cock pushed into her, inching towards the connection that she'd been aching for since they were in the library today. _Today._ She almost laughed, because of course she'd been aching for this kind of connection, a connection without barriers, for a lot longer than that.

She lifted herself to him as best she could, arching, encouraging him to push past this barricade of distrust she had erected against him and take... what? Her emotional virginity? When at last he was submerged in her, filling her, she felt inexplicably both terrified and blissfully complete. She tightened her eyelids against a traitorous prickle of tears and pulled her arms around his neck.

He remained still, buried in her, and after a moment Tonks realised that he must be waiting for her to open her eyes. When she did, it was to find Remus's amber gaze looking straight into her. He leaned forward to touch her lips with his own and then gave her a smile of such piercing sweetness that she had to swallow against the painful lump that rose up in her throat.

And then he began to move within her, the steady pace of his strokes smooth and sure. She watched his eyes fall shut and thought, as she often did, how good he was at this, so good... And those things he'd been whispering to her. Before. _God._ Ideas so wild that she wondered if he could possibly have tried a quarter of them. Because she certainly hadn't.

And she wondered...

And it _so_ _much_ wasn't the time to ask, even she realised... But she couldn't help it. For reasons that were obscure to her she needed to—

"Remus."

He heard her. Must have done, but he didn't stop. He probably thought she'd said his name as a sort of... background music, the way one does when making love. But she wanted to know, had to know, so she said again—

"Remus?"

He opened slightly glazed eyes, and the rocking of his hips slowed and then stopped. There was the faintest tremor in his arms as he struggled for control. He took a deep breath and leaned forward until his nose almost touched hers.

"Yes, Dora?" he said, the words coming out on a long exhalation. She could feel the question tickle past her cheek.

"I want..." she shook her head in embarrassment. "Sorry."

"Don't be. It's... alright. Anything, love." His eyes glimmered with desire and with something like wry curiosity as if wondering what she could possibly want at this moment that she wasn't already getting. An eyebrow quirked up in silent enquiry.

"How... how many girls, um, women, have you...?" She trailed off. Couldn't quite meet his gaze. Couldn't believe she was asking this, right now.

Apparently, neither could Remus.

He gave a sort of laughing groan, and his cock twitched inside her as he said huskily, "Can we... postpone this conversation for about, oh... thirty seconds?"

And Tonks giggled along with him, but said, "A number, Remus, that's all I want."

He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers as he hesitated, and she leaned automatically into his touch. His answer, when it came, was halting but didn't sound evasive. And Merlin knew she'd had lots of practise recognising his evasions. "I'm... not sure."

"Oh," she said doubtfully. For someone easily able to number her lovers on one hand, even including present company, it was hard to imagine that one could lose count.

Remus chuckled, seeming to sense her thoughts. "Not that many," he assured her, with another feather-light touch to her cheek. "But I never thought to keep a running tally. Didn't realise I'd be asked for references," he added teasingly. She blushed as he went on, "And... I've never been one for long relationships."

"Oh," she repeated.

He waited a moment. When she didn't speak he grasped her hips again and pulled her tightly against him so that she could feel the entire length of his erection pressing into her, driving her breath away in a little gasp. But she put her hands on his wrists to still him. "How long was the longest? Relationship, I mean."

Remus growled in mock frustration, or perhaps it was real. He knocked his forehead lightly against hers and kept it there. "That would be two months and..." he closed his eyes and screwed up his face as if in calculation. Suddenly, she knew exactly what he was going to say and thought that even this pause was probably a sham.

She waited breathlessly.

"... and twenty-three days," he said finally, opening his eyes again and looking directly into hers. Their relationship, then. His longest one. He raised his eyebrows at her. "And now... with your kind permission?"

She felt a thrill, an absurd happiness that Remus had given her this, this admission. It felt as significant as another man's declaration of undying love, and she burrowed her face into his neck for a moment to hide the wide grin that came with it. Sliding her hands from his hips, she ran them up the lean muscles of his abdomen to his chest, laying her fingers against the thump of his heart. Remus, taking this for the permission it was meant to be, gave a single sharp thrust that drew a small cry from her, driving any more questions out of her thoughts, as it was presumably intended to do.

"All right?" he asked for the second time that day, this time in a voice made rough by need.

"All right," she agreed, with a whispery almost-laugh.

Her eyes stayed locked with his dark gaze as he began to move inside her again. He lifted her hips slightly in time to his strokes so that she felt as if she were balanced on a pendulum, swinging between yearning as he pulled away and fulfilment as he plunged back into her. She gave herself up to him, aware that she had no more walls, no more defences left for him to batter down. His exhalations fell hot upon her lips, and she breathed deeply, bringing him into her, letting his goodness fill her, as her body matched his rhythm.

God, he was sexy. Not in the way he was near the full moon, when she always had the sense—possibly only a fantasy, really—of something dark and untamed, only barely suppressed beneath the surface. This was another Remus, gentler, yet still so exciting, making love to her with exquisite endurance, rocking into her with a cadence that her body couldn't help responding to. She became half lost in it, in the deep and satisfying tension of two bodies striving instinctively to become one; sensation fluttering low in her belly, building until it became a coiling need.

She was looking at him through dazed, heavy lidded eyes, at her lover of two months and twenty-three days, at his tousled hair gilded by the sun, at his expression of intense concentration as he brought them ever closer to a brilliant explosion. And as if from nowhere, it came. Not an orgasm. But a word. A sunburst of enlightenment as sharp and blinding as any physical climax could have been.

_Love._

The word filled her mind like smoke billowing from a wildfire. She _loved_ him. it wasn't affection, or fondness, or attraction, or fancy, or any of the dozen words she had used to herself in the past. She loved Remus, even if he showed who he truly was only at moments like this. With each thrust she fell more deeply, more confusedly, into love. Confusing because... how was she to reconcile the urges she was feeling now with love? She had always thought would be... purer, somehow. Not all mixed in with a jumble of other feelings: empathy and curiosity and lust and insecurity and so many more.

His movements were escalating, growing more and more purposeful: hard, primal thrusts that drove away all thought save incoherent desire. His eyes had closed again, and his face was strained and contorted with the approach of that delight which so resembled agony. There was nothing elusive or mysterious about him, not now, not when he was in her like this, holding nothing back. He bucked against her, buried his cock inside her again and again, knocking away her breath with each thrust, until they were both gasping, gripping each other with desperate fingers. It was becoming too much too bear, but not enough yet, not nearly enough.

Tonks was burning as hot as the sun, glowing, incandescent, when at last she clenched around him, tipping over the edge into blistering euphoria and pulling him down with her when she fell. Remus groaned out her name as he stiffened in powerful spasms, emptying himself deeply inside her. He buried his face in her hair as his breath came out in great heaving gusts, and his heart pounded wildly against her. She imagined the smoky tendrils of her love twining around them both as their bodies' frantic shudderings gradually slowed and then ceased.

Afterwards, as she was still floating like a wisp of cloud in the blue sky, Remus started to pull away from her. She tumbled back down to earth and clutched him. Because she wanted... well, what she wanted was to tell him that she was his forever, that she had fallen for him completely, but that would be the ultimate in stupid mistakes, wouldn't it? Counterproductive, she knew that much. So instead she settled for pulling his face to hers with both hands and kissing him repeatedly, emphatically.

She murmured, finally, "I rather liked that."

"I— Yes, you gave that impression." A breathy chuckle.

"Suppose all those old girlfriends were good for something, then." She bit her lip, trying to establish their usual banter and push away the soppiness that was threatening to spill over. "If they taught you this."

"Well, if you want to give credit to someone—other than me, of course, or in the present instance," Remus raised her hand and kissed her fingertips, "you—then it should probably be Sirius."

"Oh? Are you about to tell me something a girl definitely doesn't want to hear at a moment like this?" She arched an eyebrow playfully.

"I hope not," he laughed. "He's only ever given me one bit of advice about women, which I can encapsulate in three simple words."

She assumed they weren't the same three words that were singing through her heart right now, so she was unsurprised when he bent his head to her ear and muttered, "Girls love foreplay."

She giggled. "He said that?"

He gently disengaged himself and stood up. Glancing around for his wand, he replied somewhat distractedly, "Actually, his words were coarser and, of course, far more plentiful. You know him. The term 'mind fuck' was, for example, freely bandied about—he was reading _A Clockwork Orange_ at the time—but that was the gist of it."

"The gist, hm? Sanitised for a lady's ears?" Remus had located his wand and now cast a Cleaning Charm over her, which tingled nicely. She was reminded briefly of her last boyfriend, who invariably did himself first with whatever wand was handy, before tossing it onto the bed for her to use. In hindsight, that seemed... unchivalrous.

She stood up as well, and picked up a blue and yellow striped sock. "You're kind to spare my blushes, Remus, but I think that after the very imaginative suggestions you were making a few minutes ago, I could probably have withstood the unedited version. Still, he was certainly right."

They were both snickering as Remus said, "Go ahead and thank him sometime. He'd be pleased to know that he contributed, however indirectly, to showing you a good time."

* * *

Tonks smiled to herself as she recalled this last bit of their conversation. The lingering resentment she'd been feeling towards both men seemed to have dissipated entirely under the force of this happy memory. She pulled out her wand and deftly Transfigured both of her boots into lucky charms—a pewter clover and a rabbit's foot—and attached them to the key-chain in her robe pocket. She stood and pointed her wand to the bundle of reports, which she Transfigured into an address book and pocketed as well.

Before leaving the room, she walked to the mirror, made a silly face at herself, and then pushed, _just so_, until her hair turned short, pink, and spiky, just the way she liked it when she was feeling particularly chipper. Turning her head this way and that, she examined the effect and grinned. Now she was ready to go back downstairs and face the world with a generous heart.

As she entered the downstairs hall, she could hear them, or at least Sirius, from a long distance off. They seemed to be arguing, although at first it was only disjointed phrases from Sirius.

"Show you your place... arrogant... waiting until the last possible... waltz in and... fucking bastard..."

She slowed as she approached the library, loitering near the door for the second time that day as the disagreement escalated.

"... and if I have to hear one more time about how he's just a misunderstood soul who's never known love and—"

"—that's not what I'm saying and you—"

"—if the poor sod could only gain the acceptance of his peers in the Order everything would be—"

"—know it. You're twisting this because of your own problems, it's—"

"—wonderful. He's not the only one who had a 'difficult upbringing,' you know. It's no excuse for joining— Look at Reg, I never made—

"—nothing to do with him, it's you." Remus transferred his gaze from Sirius to Tonks as she peeked around the doorway. The tight anger that had been in his face fell away in an instant, replaced be a calm blankness, the kind of look that could hide anything.

"—excuses for him either. This is not some desperate cry for acceptance, it's his way of pushing you until—"

"_Enough_, Sirius." Remus said sharply, still looking at Tonks. For a wonder, Sirius shut off the tap in mid-flow.

Tonks slipped in through the door rather hesitantly. She'd never seen Remus look so angry. Come to think of it, she'd never actually seen him looking angry at all, although she was sure he felt it sometimes. Normally, if something upset him, he'd bury his nose in whatever book he happened to be holding, or do a bit of staccato tapping with his fingers, or possibly get up and walk away. She'd never noticed him actually glaring at someone before. It was disconcerting. Apparently, Sirius was capable of bringing out more emotions in Remus than she was. And _that_ would be quite a stupid reason for jealousy, she told herself firmly.

Sirius was still standing practically nose to nose with Remus, and Tonks saw his fists convulsively clenching and unclenching. Remus, on the other hand, was perfectly still, his hands carefully relaxed at his side. He was continuing to regard Tonks with that strangely off-putting calmness, a faint crease between his eyebrows being the only giveaway that he was uneasy.

Noticing for the first time the direction of Remus's attention, Sirius whirled around.

"Tonks!" Sirius broke into a smile, his anger seeming to evaporate instantly. Without a backwards glance, he bounded over to her and fell to his knees, head bent to bare the back of his neck. Tonks's mouth fell open, as she looked from Sirius, all joking now, to Remus, who had turned away from them and walked around behind the settee, rubbing his own neck is if it felt stiff.

Sirius said contritely, "Remus has read me the riot act. I'm to beg your forgiveness and admit I'm not worthy to black your boots— er, trainers?" He paused and looked doubtfully from her face to her shoes. "Weren't you wearing boots a minute ago?"

Tonks grinned uncertainly down at the man grovelling at her feet, the very picture of abject penitence. With a quick glance again at Remus, whose back was still turned, she said, "Yeah. I broke 'em."

Sirius appeared to struggled to maintain his doleful expression. "I made you so angry you broke your boots?" he asked with something like hope in his voice.

"No, idiot." She couldn't help laughing a little at that. "I broke a heel this morning. What did you imagine, that I was throwing my boots against a wall or something, wishing it was your head?"

"Well... It has been known to happen."

"Somehow I'm not amazed to hear that."

"So. Do you forgive me, poor, worthless lump that I am?"

"I'm still thinking about it," replied Tonks, unwilling to let him off too easily. She'd begun to suspect that this performance might be as much for Remus's benefit as for her own. Men had strange ways of making up with each other. "This business with the steak, now. All true, I take it? Because I've never known you to do so much as boil an egg."

"Completely true." He called over his shoulder to Remus, "Back me up, here, mate."

Remus turned back to them. He took a breath and exhaled, as if he were symbolically extinguishing his brief flare of temper.

"He made it himself," Remus affirmed, sounding the tiniest bit ruffled still, but clearly making an effort. "And it was delicious. I assume you prepared it by your usual method, Padfoot?"

"Used _Flammus_, over the sink, which reminds me that I'd better clear up before Molly gets here."

"Too late," Tonks smirked.

"Ah, shit. I'm going to catch it later. Oh, well. And Remus's steak got the patented Black smouldering glance to get it all hot and bothered. Worked a treat, as usual. Surprised the thing didn't into crawl up into my lap and start snogging me senseless."

"Ah. The smouldering glance, was it?" The corner of Remus's mouth hitched up briefly, seemingly against his will. "I prefer to use a scorching glare, myself. More manly."

"I've more 'manly' in my little finger than you have in your entire—"

"Dream on."

"Moony, I've aired my opinion on this issue before. We need to nip in the bud your bizarre new ambition to infest my dreams. Scotch the idea immediately. No Lupins requested or desired. And allow me to reiterate my position that—while no doubt others hold markedly different views," here he gave Tonks a significant glance, "to me, the dream Moony is more of a nightmare."

Remus saluted him with an imaginary rapier to the forehead. "Touché." Remus grinned faintly, and this time it didn't look forced.

"No longer raging like a Red Cap, then?" asked Sirius, gazing beseechingly at Tonks from his prone position.

"Well..." said Tonks, "I'm still thinking about it."

"And what about _him_, while you're thinking?" Sirius asked plaintively, pointing an accusing finger behind him in the general direction of Remus.

"What about him?" she asked, puzzled.

"He laughed, too."

"Now wait just a minute. Innocent party, here. I didn't start it," Remus protested.

"Did so."

"I most certainly—"

"Punish him, Tonks! I demand that he share in my punishment! He deserves it. As, of course," he added virtuously, "do I."

Tonks bit her lip to hide a smile. "Oh, alright. If you insist, I'll punish him... later."

"Some people have all the the luck," Sirius muttered under his breath.

"You know," she observed, "The two of you can get a bit... _wearing_ on long acquaintance."

"Exactly what McGonagall used to say as she was clapping me in irons and hauling me before the Inquisition. Which was generally directly _after_ she'd patted St. Remus here on the head and sent him back to his prayers. History so often repeats itself, don't you find? But _please_, Tonks, this prostrating myself business..." Sirius shifted on his knees. "It's getting old. Not still upset?"

"No. Not even when I first came in, actually," admitted Tonks with a grin. "In fact, I even take back what I said about it being an image I didn't want in my head. It's a perfectly lovely image. So there."

"Oh. Well." Sirius blinked. "Er. Thanks... I think."

"My pleasure entirely."

"And stop rolling your eyes, Lupin," Sirius called, without turning around.

"My eyes are at this moment shut. In horror." Tonks watched Remus close them briefly as he spoke and then open them again, giving her the ghost of a wink and his first real smile since she came in. For just a moment he looked far more like a cheeky Third-year than a greying ex-Professor.

Sirius rolled his own eyes, apparently thinking someone ought to do it. "Does this mean we can kiss and make up?" he asked her with a hopeful pucker. "Because my kneecaps are killing me."

"We'll see about that. But you may arise, vassal."

"Thank you, milady." As Remus watched them with a rather indulgent expression, Sirius made a show of staggering to his feet. Grabbing both of Tonks's hands, Sirius lowered his head with a rather well-executed courtly bow to kiss them. Just as his lips grazed her knuckles, the library door swung fully open to admit a black-gowned Severus Snape.

He looked from Sirius's mouth, to Tonks, and then to Remus. His lip curled. "Am I... interrupting?"

_(to be continued in chapter 9)_

* * *

_**Author's note: **__Well... uh... bleurgh. I'm awfully glad this chapter is behind me LOL. It was a toughie. For fans of the dark and brooding Potions master, your fellow takes centre stage for a while next time. And Tonks and Remus get to spend time alone, and not even shagging either but actually... conversing! :)_  
_  
Reviews are my sweet recompense for writing this story, so if you'll share a few words, I'd love to hear them!_


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